The nature of truth : an essay

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THE

NATURE OF TRUTH

AN ESSAY BY
HAROLD H. JOACHIM

FELLOW AND TUTOR OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD

OXFORD

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1906

CO

Q*

HENRY FROWDE, M.A.

PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

LONDON, EDINBURGH
NEW YORK AND TORONTO

885230

PREFACE

THE following Essay does not pretend to establish
a new theory. Its object is to examine certain typical
notions of truth, one or other of which — whether in
the form of a vague assumption, or raised to the level
of an explicit theory — has hitherto served as the basis
of philosophical speculation. If I am not mistaken,
every one of these typical notions and accredited
theories of truth fails sooner or later to maintain itself
against critical investigation. And I have tried, whilst
exhibiting the nature and the grounds of their failure,
to indicate in what direction (if in any) there appears
some prospect of more successful construction.

The reader will find no mention of the theory known
alternatively as * Pragmatism ' or ' Humanism'. It is
not easy to discern the meaning of its advocates
through the noise of their advocacy. But they appear
to be engaged in a twofold enterprise. For firstly
they desire to emphasize certain elementary theses,
which many idealists are equally concerned to main
tain ; and these I have endeavoured to discuss, so far
as the subject demanded, in my third and fourth
chapters. But secondly they wish to revive certain
views, which in Plato's Theaetetus are attributed to
Protagoras. The revival is a reconstruction. The old

wine is poured into new bottles ; the ancient doctrine

A 2

4 PREFACE

is arrayed in a modern dress. But in substance the
doctrine remains, what Plato proved it to be : not
a new theory of truth, but a denial of truth
altogether.

It is natural to feel some hesitation in publishing
a work avowedly critical in character and negative in
result. But I offer this Essay to my fellow-students,
in the hope that it will induce them to reflect once
more on the foundations of their philosophical think
ing. If they will but reflect in earnest, I shall be
amply satisfied. For the conviction will force itself
upon them that those foundations are fatally insecure.
The ground will be cleared, and construction will come
in due time.

Every writer on philosophical subjects is indebted,
beyond all possibility of adequate acknowledgement, to
the great thinkers of the past, and to those who are
working with him in the field of his inquiry. But
the debt is one which he makes for himself, or at least
incalculably increases, by free and honest criticism.
If the labours of those whom he criticizes have ren
dered his criticism possible, it is only by criticizing
that he is brought to the intelligent appreciation of
their work. Hence I must not be thought ungrate
ful or wanting in respect because I have criticized:
nor must it be supposed that I am unmindful of those
obligations which I have not expressly acknowledged.
Thus, the reader will see for himself how greatly I
have been influenced by Mr. F. H. Bradley and Pro
fessor Bosanquet, though I have referred to them but
seldom, and then mainly in order to criticize. And

PEEFACE 5

I am fully aware that the greater part of my work
draws its inspiration from the writings of Hegel,
whose name I have mentioned only once.

The whole of the second chapter was submitted to
my friend Mr. Bertrand Eussell before it was printed.
I am most sincerely grateful to him for the patience
and the kindness with which he replied to my criti
cism in detail. Since my primary object was to
examine a typical theory of truth, and not to attack
Mr. Eussell, I have not thought it necessary to make
any substantial alterations. But the reader must not
assume that the theory which I have criticized is
accepted by Mr. Eussell as in all points identical with
his own.

Lastly, I am glad to acknowledge the constant help
and the many valuable suggestions which I have re
ceived from my friends Mr. J. A. Smith, Fellow of
Balliol, and Mr. E. P. Hardie, Lecturer at Edinburgh
University. And my thanks are specially due to the
Master of Balliol, Dr. Edward Caird, who read the
whole Essay and encouraged me to persevere in pre
paring it for publication.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

TRUTH AS CORRESPONDENCE . 7

CHAPTER II

TRUTH AS A QUALITY OF INDEPENDENT ENTITIES . 31

CHAPTER III

TRUTH AS COHERENCE . . . . . 4 .64
(i) THE COHERENCE-NOTION OF TRUTH
(ii) DEGREES OF TRUTH

CHAPTER IV

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND ERROR . . . .122

INDEX .181

CHAPTEE I

TRUTH AS CORRESPONDENCE

§ 1. IN most of the everyday judgements of common
sense, and in many philosophical theories, a certain
conception of truth is implied or expressed, which
I shall call the i correspondence-notion ' of truth.
Thus e. g. to * speak the truth ' is to speak l in accor
dance with ' or * in conformity to ' the facts. A ' true '
man, or a * true ' friend, is a person whose outward
acts 'correspond to' — faithfully reflect — his inner
feelings. A narrative is i true ' if it ' re-presents ',
in essentials and within its own sphere, the real
order of events. So again, according to Aristotle, the
synthesis or analysis of the thoughts expressed in
a true judgement l must exactly re-present, or corre
spond to, the way in which the real things are con
joined or divided ; and a i scientific truth ' is the
conclusion of a deductive inference, which exactly
repeats in its structure the necessary coherence of
a substance with its proprium through the proximate
cause of that connexion.

The above examples will serve to indicate the
general type of theory which I call the ' correspon
dence-notion ' of truth ; and without further pre
liminaries I shall proceed to examine it.

2. Truth, according to all forms of the correspon
dence-notion, is a determinate relation between two

1 The ' correspondence-notion ' of truth in Aristotle is always
confined to truth of judgement or inference. The immediate
apprehension of Simple Realities is l true ' in a different sense.
Cf. below, ch. iv, §§ 47, 48, and 50.

8 THE NATUEE OF TKUTH

distinct factors : and this relation must be l for ' a
mind.1 In other words, truth is an experience of
two factors determinately related to one another.

It will be convenient to use Leibniz's conception of
the l perceptive ' state of a Monad, in order to bring out
the nature of the * determinate relation ' to which the
above description refers. Every Monad is a unity of
an infinite inner plurality of qualitative differences.
And every qualitative difference, i. e. every element of
the inner manifold of each Monad, corresponds, or is
determinately and uniquely related, to an element of
the manifold in * the world ', i. e. in the other Monads.
In so far as a Monad is aware of the plurality which
it unrolls within itself, and aware that it thus corre
sponds, element for element, to a manifold other than
its own, the Monad consciously perceives; and its
perception is true,, and true for it.2 So far as the
Monad is not aware of its inner plurality as thus
corresponding, there is no ' perception ' in the ordinary
sense of the term3; and there is no truth 'for' the
Monad. The Monad would ' reflect ' the outer plu
rality, much as a mirror reflects an object. But the
perception in the one case, and the reflection in the
other, would only exist l for ' a consciousness appre
hending the two factors and their relation. And apart
from this condition it would be meaningless to call
the Monad's inner state 'true' or 'false', or the

1 It is possible (as we shall see) to hold a theory which denies
that * truth ' as such is ' for ' any mind. Truth, we may insist, is
1 independent ', and its nature must not be confused by the
irrelevant introduction of l psychological ' notions. But we are
not at present concerned with this theory : see below, pp. 13, 35 ff.

2 Leibniz calls such conscious perception 'apperception'. The
reader will kindly bear in mind that I am not expounding
Leibniz's doctrine, but merely using it as a convenient illustra
tion of the meaning of l correspondence.'

3 Leibniz calls it ' perception ' ; but he expressly extends the
use of the term for his own reasons.

TEUTH AS CORRESPONDENCE 9

mirror's disposition an ' accurate ' or ' distorted ' picture
of the object.

The relation between the manifolds, it is hardly
necessary to say, is neither bare identity nor simple
otherness. In a sense, no doubt, it is 'the same'
world, i.e. the same manifold, which constitutes the
inner plurality of all the Monads. But each represents
the universe with different degrees of clearness : each
reflects the world from its own l point of view '. The
manifold, qua constituting the inner plurality of dif
ferent Monads, is itself different. So it is not the same
identical elements which appear both in the mirror
and in the object. Yet the elements in the two
factors, although not identical, are not barely other.
For they are so related, that for each element on the
one side there is a determinate element — one and only
one — on the other. Correspondence, therefore, here
means being related by a one-one relation.1 Two
factors, each a one-of-many, i correspond' when each
constituent of the one stands in a one-one relation to
a determinate constituent of the other. And there is
1 truth ' when this correspondence is i for ' a conscious
ness ; i.e. either 'for' one of the factors qua itself
conscious, or ' for ' a third being.

§ 3. Yet a closer inspection reveals fatal defects in
the above account of the meaning of ' correspondence '.
For (1) by reducing the corresponding factors to aggre
gates of simple elements, standing uniquely in relation
one to one, we have created a mere semblance of
clearness which criticism will show to be illusory ;
and (2) we have not even attempted to explain what
* being for a consciousness ' is to mean.

(1) If you have a whole of parts such that each part
contributes determinately to constitute the whole, and

1 For the meaning of a l one-one relation', see Mr. Bertrand
Kussell's Principles of Mathematics, I, pp. 113, 130, 305.

10 THE NATUBE OF TKUTH

that the structural plan of the whole determines pre
cisely the nature of the differences which are its parts1,
you can compare this whole with another whole of the
same type. And you can say 'the part x in A (the
first whole) corresponds to the part y in B (the second
whole)'.

Your judgement would mean that x fulfils in the
inner systematization of A the same function as y ful
fils in that of B: i. e. what x is to A, that y is to B.
And if you could trace this analogy through all the
parts of the two wholes, you would be justified in
asserting that ' A corresponds to B', or that ' A and B
are similar, or resemble one another ' ; or again that
4 every part of A corresponds to every part of B ', or
that l every part of A is related by a one-one relation
to every part of B '.

The ' correspondence', when attributed to the wholes,
is simply a name for identity of purpose expressed
through materially different constituents as an
identical structure, plan, or cycle of functions ; and,
when attributed to the parts, it means identity of
function contributed by materially different con
stituents towards the maintenance of an identical
plan or purpose.

Nothing is gained in clearness by the notion of a
1 one-one relation ' between the parts ; for the relation
in question depends through and through upon the
system of relations — i. e. the plan, cycle of functions,
or teleological scheme — within which the relata on
either side have their being. There is no ' correspon
dence ' between two ' simple beings', nor between
elements of wholes considered as l simple beings ', i.e.

1 Such a whole is no mere aggregate or collection of its parts,
but a genuine whole or individual. And its unity will be teleo
logical in character, i.e. its inner structure will be the systematic
expression of a single plan, purpose, or idea.

TKUTH AS CORRESPONDENCE 11

without respect to the systematization of their wholes.
And if this be so, it is clear that our effort to render
the notion of correspondence precise was ill-advised.
For we tried to reduce it to the notion of one-one
relations between ultimately simple elements, or be
tween constituents of wholes considered as ultimately
simple atomic entities. But a simple entity cannot as
such, and considered as such, be related to anything. If
we identify, distinguish, or in any way relate A and B —
two simple entities — we have eo ipso retracted their
simplicity ; and their simplicity never existed, if their
nature justified our proceedings. A simple point on
the surface of a mirror, qua simple point, can suggest
nothing other than itself — if indeed it can be deter-
minately ' itself ' at all. As a point on the surface,
i.e. as one in a scheme of related points, it may under
certain conditions ' suggest ', ' resemble ', ' correspond
to', a different point in another system of related
points whose structural scheme is the same as that of
the scheme in the mirror. But it has acquired its
power of suggestion at the cost of its simplicity.

It will perhaps be objected that the above argument
rests upon certain assumptions which modern Logic
has shown to be mere superstitions. And it is true
that I have assumed (i) that a purely external relation
is in the end meaningless and impossible ; and (ii) that
elements, which merely are juxtaposed or otherwise
externally connected, do not so far constitute a genuine
whole at all. As regards the first assumption, I must
admit that a relation, which really falls between two
independent entities, is to my mind a third indepen
dent entity which in no intelligible sense relates the
first two. I am not indeed maintaining that every
relation is nothing but the adjective of its terms. But
I am maintaining that every relation at least qualifies
its terms, and is so far an adjective of them, even if

12 THE NATURE OF TRUTH

it be also something besides. And I am maintaining
that, so far as A and B are related, they are eo ipso
interdependent features of something other than either
of them singly : and, on the other hand, that if A and
B really are each absolutely simple and independent,
it is nonsense to say that they also are really related.1
With regard to my second assumption, it is enough
for my present purpose to urge that at any rate
a judgement which claims truth, and a picture which
is to be a portrait, are wholes of parts whose unity is
not that of mere juxtaposition or external connexion.

We may now modify our account of ' correspon
dence '. Two different factors, we shall say, * corre
spond' when each of them is a whole whose inner
structure is teleological, when that structure is iden
tical as the explication of the same idea or purpose,
and when, finally, for every distinctive part fulfilling
a determinate function within the one factor there is a
part fulfilling the same 2 function within the other.
In so far as the above conditions are completely
fulfilled, the wholes exactly correspond : and there is
correspondence, to some degree, in so far as the
conditions are fulfilled at all. And if this correspon
dence is 'for' a mind, that mind regards the one
factor as a more or less accurate representation of the
other ; whilst if one factor is the judgement of a mind
about the other factor, that judgement is more or less
true according to the exactness of the correspondence.

§4. (2) The most difficult feature in the corre
spondence-notion has not hitherto been considered at
all — viz. the part which a mind is required to play in
the constitution of truth. Either — as we have crudely
put it — one of the two corresponding factors must

1 On ' external relations', see below, pp. 43 if., 49.

2 i.e. the part x in A contributes to A's being in the same way
as the part y in B contributes to B'a being.

TKUTH AS CORRESPONDENCE 13

itself be * the judgement of a mind about the other ' :
or the two factors in their correspondence must be
4 for a mind'. In the latter case, there is on the
part of the mind a recognition of one factor as a true
description, a faithful portrait, an exact representation,
&c., of the other. In the former case, the mental
factor overreaches the other factor — i.e. the other
factor, as well as itself, is ' for it ' — and there is on
the part of the mental factor a recognition of itself
as an adequate conception of, a true judgement or
inference about, the other factor. This — the more
complex case — is the one with which we are primarily
concerned : but we may hope that a fuller consideration
of the other more simple case will throw some light
upon it.1

It will be observed that in both cases I have spoken
of a recognition of the truth : and an obvious criticism
would be to insist on the separation of Truth and the
Recognition of it. ' Truth ', it might be said, ' is the
correspondence of the two factors : and nothing further
is required. Whether a mind recognizes it or not, is
a purely psychological question and has nothing what
ever to do with the logical problem as to the meaning
of truth. Truth is what it is independently, whether
any mind recognizes it or not. We do not make the
correspondence, which is truth ; we find it, and our
finding is irrelevant to its being, and must be separated
therefrom by any sound theory.'

This is in fact the contention of a possible theory
to which we have already alluded 2, and we shall have
to examine it fully when we are criticizing that theory.
In the meantime, I shall assume that truth is essentially
in and for judgement. We do not create truth, but
only find it ; and we could not find it if it were not

1 The two cases, we shall find, come in the end to the same
thing. See below, pp. 18, 19. 2 Above, p. 8, note 1.

14: THE NATUKE OF TEUTH

there and (in a sense) independent of our finding.
And yet we cannot separate truth and the finding
of it, and treat these as two independent factors which
are externally combined in the apprehension of truth.
Truth, I shall assume, is not truth at all except in so
far as it is recognized, i.e. except in so far as it is the
living experience of a mind. And a * correspondence '
which is not ' for ' a mind, whatever sense we may be
able to give to such a notion, at any rate is not a truth.
What makes the above criticism seem plausible is
a certain ambiguity1 which may be pointed out at
once. The finding of a truth, as an historical process
of (or in) my mind, is irrelevant to the nature and the
being of the truth. A truth is, independently of my
thinking it, and, again, in independence of the process
through which I come to think it. But it does not
follow, as the criticism assumes, that a truth is,
independently of any and all thinking it, nor even in
independence of any and all process of reaching it.
' The internal angles of a triangle are equal to two
right angles ' : this is a truth, no matter whether you
or I recognize it or not, and, in a sense, no matter
whether any one is now thinking it. And, again,
its truth does not depend upon the process through
which I came to think it. And yet if no one thought
it — if it had not come to be * for ' mind, and were not,
in any sense, ' for ' mind — i it ' would not l be ' at all.

§5. Let us return to the consideration of the more
simple case which we agreed to examine first. i The
two factors in their correspondence are for a mind ' :
this is to be the meaning, when we (the mind in question)
say of the one factor that it is a 'true description'
or a l faithful portrait ' of the other. We perceive e.g.

1 We shall be better able to see the full significance of this
ambiguity when we come to treat of the individual and universal
aspects of Truth. See below, §§ 7 and 8.

TKUTH AS CORRESPONDENCE 15

a human face and a portrait. On each side we recognize
a whole of parts with a determinate inner structure or
plan of coherence. The parts of the one whole are
materially different from the parts of the other ; but
the structure of the two wholes, the form or plan of
coherence of their parts, is the same. For every
determinate function in the maintenance of that plan
which is exercised by a part on the one side, there is
a determinate function the same in kind exercised by
a part on the other side. Or again, we apprehend a
succession of historical events as a whole constituted
by the unfolding of an idea or the expression of
a purpose ; and, on the other hand, we apprehend a
chapter in a book in which this whole is i repeated '
in a different material. The latter we call a ' true
description ' or a ' faithful narrative ' of the former.

But in this account there is much that is unsatis
factory. We have laid stress on the necessity of
teleological unity in both factors. The face is to be
a whole whose parts contribute each a determinate
function to constitute and express its unity ; it is, in
other words, to embody * character ' or ; significance '
for the mind apprehending it. The historical succession
is to be apprehended as the unfolding of an idea or
the expression of a purpose. It seems necessary to
insist on this condition ; for otherwise how could the
mind apprehend either factor as i one ', as a i whole ',
at all? And how could it determine what are to
count as * parts' on either side? One event in
an historical succession is ' one ' only by reference to
the purpose for which it is a means ; and one part
of the face is l one ', it would seem, as embodying
a determinate element in the character or significance
of the face. But if we are driven thus to emphasize
the embodiment of purpose, the teleological structure,
in both factors, it seems clear that the ' truth ' of

16 THE NATURE OF TEUTH

a narrative or a portrait — or even of a reflection —
becomes increasingly dependent on the nature of the
' recognition ' by the apprehending mind. We can no
longer suppose that the mind plays the part of the
absolutely disinterested spectator and in no sense
'makes' the facts. On the contrary, the mind sees
what it makes by its interpretation : and the * truth '
of the corresponding factor varies in degree with the
nature of the recognition which the mind brings to
bear. What the painter sees in the face, that he
expresses in his portrait ; and the portrait will be more
or less 'true' or 'faithful' according to the painter's
insight, and, again, according to the mind of the
spectator who sees and compares both the original and
the picture. Even the photographer's camera can
' lie ', i. e. fail to produce a ' true ' representation of its
subject. And though a chronicle may, from one point
of view, ' correspond ' detail for detail with the
historical events, yet for its reader, even if not for
its writer, it may be radically false. For it may
entirely miss the * significance ' of the piece of history,
and so convey a thoroughly false impression.

Thus the importance of ' correspondence ', as the
constitutive condition of truth, sinks more and more
into the background. Another condition emerges as
the primary determinant not only of the degree of
truth, but of its very being. For truth is seen to
depend on the nature of the idea expressing itself
as the inner structure of the corresponding wholes,
rather than on the 'correspondence' of the two
expressions. And of course we could not rest here.
For we cannot assume that the idea in question
possesses its 'significance' (its fullness of meaning
or its power to constitute truth) alone and in its own
right. It in turn derives its significance from a larger
significant system to which it contributes. And this

TEUTH AS COBKESPONDENCE 17

line of thought would lead us to a theory of truth
fundamentally different from the ' correspondence-
notion'. That notion, so far as we have studied it
at present, appears to give us at best the mere externals
of what constitutes truth. Correspondence, perhaps
we may say, is a symptom of truth. We do not yet
know whether there may be truth without corre
spondence ; but at least there may be correspondence
without truth, or with truth so trifling that serious
falsehood is involved in it. And when there is truth,
it is not the ' correspondence ' which primarily de
termines its being, its nature, or its extent. Truth
depends primarily on something other than corre
spondence — on something which itself conditions the
being and the nature of the correspondence.

§6. And worse is to come. For we have now to
consider the more complex case in which one factor, the
'mental' factor, recognizes itself as an adequate concep
tion of, a true judgement or inference about, the other.

In the cases with which we have hitherto been
concerned, one factor was recognized by a mind as
representing the other : or the mind read both factors
as conveying the same idea in different materials
through ' corresponding ' expressions. It was apparently
more or less arbitrary which factor was the original
and which the representation. In general we take the
simpler or more abstract expression as the represen
tation of the fuller, or more concrete, expression of
the idea. Thus, the image in the mirror ' reflects ' the
face ; and the image is a less concrete expression of
the idea, an expression in a simpler material. The
narrative ' portrays ' the facts ; and the narrative is
a whole of simpler and abstract elements in comparison
with the fullness and concreteness of the historical
occurrences. In the two corresponding factors we
have, it would seem, two more or less adequate

18 THE NATURE OF TRUTH

embodiments of an idea — two partial expressions ;
and on the whole we treat the less adequate em
bodiment, the more incomplete expression, as the
portrait or image of the more complete, though still
partial, expression.1

But in the cases which we are now to consider, one
factor is explicitly i mental ' in some sense in which
the other is not; and the other factor is explicitly
' real ' in some sense in which the first is not. And
truth is to be the correspondence of the ' mental '
with the ' real ', so that the * mental ' apprehends
the 'real'.

In the first set of cases there was an appearance of
externality, of independence or objectivity, in the two
corresponding factors which seemed to justify us in
treating them apart from those cases which we have
now to examine. The narrative and the events, the
picture and the original, seem alike external to the
apprehending mind ; and the correspondence between
the two factors, which that mind may observe, seems
very different from that correspondence of judgement
with reality which the judging mind constitutes as it
judges. Yet really and in the end the two sets of
cases come to the same thing and involve the same
problem. For the truth of the narrative or the picture
is only 2 for the mind which apprehends both narrative
and events, both picture and original. And, as that
mind's apprehension, the narrative and the picture are
conceptions, judgements and inferences, which, in

1 At times we appear to reverse this way of looking at things.
For we may speak of a life as the faithful expression of certain
principles or ideals, and even of a man as the ' living image ' of
his ancestor's portrait. But the antithesis between * simple ' and
' full ', ' abstract ' and * concrete ' expressions, as we have employed
it above, is popular and indeterminate, and must not be treated
seriously.

2 I am not suggesting that the truth is nothing but the mind's
apprehension, though in a sense this may turn out to be true.

TEUTH AS CORRESPONDENCE 19

contrast with the events and the original, are somehow
distinctively i mental'. The events and the original,
on the other hand, are regarded somehow, in contrast
with the narrative and the picture, as distinctively
1 real ' ; although, as apprehended, they too are the
experience of the same apprehending mind.

Thus both sets of cases involve the same problem,
which we may formulate roughly in the following
manner. Wherever there is truth, there are, accord
ing to the correspondence-notion, two expressions of an
Idea, or two factors related in the fashion described
above. And one factor is in some pre-eminent sense

* mental ', the other in some distinctive way i real '.
Yet both factors are certainly ' mental ', and also both
factors are undeniably t real '. What precise sense is
to be given to the ' Mentality ' and ' Eeality ' of the
factors, so as to reconcile these apparently conflicting
requirements ?

A judgement e.g. is true, if the thoughts whose
union is the judgement ' correspond ' to the facts
whose union is the 'real' situation which is to be
expressed. My judgement is true if my ideas, as as
serted by me in my judgement, correspond to the
facts. But my ideas (as the corresponding factor) are

* real ', and l real ' not simply in the sense that they
are certain events actually happening in my psychical
history. For it is not qua psychical events that my
ideas correspond with the facts and, in correspond
ing, are true. And, on the other hand, the facts
are 'mental'; for they are what the judgements of
the world at large, or of the specialists in question,
affirm — judgements with which I identify myself
in the act of recognizing my private judgement
as corresponding with the facts. Again, from the
point of view of the ' world at large ', or the
4 body of scientific knowledge', truth is still, we are

B 2

20 THE NATUKE OF TRUTH

to suppose, a i correspondence ' between a ' mental '
factor (certain thoughts, judgements, and inferences)
and a ' real ' something. And here at least it is re
cognized that the ' mental ' factor is no mere psychical
sequence, but is ' real ' in a different sense ; whilst it
must be recognized on reflection that the ' real ' factor
is not ' external to mind ' or ' unrelated to conscious
ness '. But it is not easy to learn, from the adherents
of the correspondence-notion, what precisely the i men
tal ' factor is, and in what sense it is i real ' ; or, again,
what precisely the ' real ' factor is, and in what sense
it is related to consciousness, or to what consciousness
it is related. Yet without a clear account of both
these factors it is obvious that no definite meaning
can be attached to the correspondence between them,
which is truth.

§ 7. We may begin by reminding ourselves of a
familiar distinction.1

Truth is clearly independent. It has its own stub
born nature, to which our thinking must conform on
pain of failure, i. e. error. We do not make or alter
truth by our thinking, any more than we make or
alter goodness by our conduct, or beauty by our love
or by our artistic endeavours. Truth is discovered,
and not invented ; and its nature is unaffected by the
time and process of discovery, and careless of the
personality of the discoverer. It is to this independent
entity that the judgement of this or that person must
conform if he is to attain truth. Correspondence of
his thinking with this ' reality ' is truth for him ; but
such correspondence requires an independent truth 2 as
one of its factors and is not itself the essence of truth.

1 Cf. e.g. F. H. Bradley < On Truth and Practice ', in Mind, N.S.,
No. 51, especially pp. 319, 320, 335.

2 The ' real ' factor here is the ' independent truth ', i. e. truth
recognized as independent by the individual who attains truth
in making his judgement correspond.

TEUTH AS CORRESPONDENCE 21

And yet there is another side of the matter. For
truth is actual as true thinking, goodness lives in the
volitions and actions of men, and beauty has its being
in the love of its worshippers and in the creative
activity of the artist.1 Truth, goodness, and beauty,
in short, appear in the actual world and exist in finite
experience. To experience them is, no doubt, to
transcend the purely personal, the merely finite
experience ; but finite experience is the vehicle of
their being. They live as the experience of finite
subjects ; and their life (at least on one side of itself)
is judgement, emotion, volition — the processes and
activities of finite individuals.

Truth, if it is to be for me, must enter into my intel
lectual endeavour and emerge in my conscious thought
as the result of a personal process, and as, in a sense,
my personal possession. I must get to know it, and
I must express it when known, and the expression is
tinged with my personal individuality and is my judge
ment. Doubtless it is irrelevant to the nature of truth
whether I know it or you. Truth is independent of
the process by which I come to know it, and is
unaffected by the time at which I know it. But yet
this independent truth itself, whose nature holds aloof
from the conditions of its l existence for me ' — this
truth, which I may struggle to grasp, but which in the
very struggle retains its independence of my efforts

1 Thus the beauty of a work of art — e.g. Hamlet, Beethoven's
violin concerto, a great picture, or a statue — has its being partly
in the experience of its creator, partly in the experience of those
who appreciate it, and, in appreciating it, re-create it for them
selves. The beauty of a poem, a play, or a piece of music clearly is
dependent in a very vital sense upon the reciter, the actors, or the
executant musician ; but it is dependent also upon the emotional
and intellectual individualities of the audience. The beauty of
a picture or a statue seems independent of the individual interpre
tations of the lovers of beauty, but it is not so in reality, any more
than it is independent of the artistic personality of its creator.

22 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

and is untouched alike by my success and by my
failure — this independent truth lives and moves and
has its being in the judgements of finite minds. It is
independent of this and that mind, qua this and that ;
independent of the particular time and process of its
expression and the individual machinery of its revela
tion. But it is essential to it to be expressed or
revealed, and to be expressed in the different features
of its coherent structure as the knowledge of different
minds. It is universal and single and timeless. But
it is a single content or significance, which manifests
itself in a plurality of meanings, in very different
degrees at different stages of the development of human
thought, and as a system of knowledge which con
stitutes and is constituted by the intellectual in
dividualities of many finite thinkers.

§8. If we now return to the problem as to the
corresponding factors, we may distinguish two cases ;
for (1) my judgement is said to be 'true' when it
corresponds to the ' facts' or the accepted views, and
(2) a scientific theory or an accepted judgement is
regarded as ' true ' because it corresponds to the ' nature
of things ' or to ' Eeality '.

It is clear that, where I claim truth for my private
-judgement as corresponding to the facts, both corre
sponding factors are before my mind.1 But they
need not both be 'for me' at the same level of conscious
ness. One factor is present to my mind — in the form

1 For the sake of simplicity I am considering only the case in
which my private judgement corresponds to the facts, i. e. is true,
for me. If you — and not I — recognize that my judgement is
true, the corresponding factors are * before your mind ' ; and what
is said in the text applies to the truth of my judgement as it is
for you. My judgement is not true for me, in this case, any more
than the likeness of the portrait or the reflection in the mirror
are faithful or exact for them. The l truth ' of my judgement,
when it is for you and not for me, falls into line with the cases of
the mirror and the narrative. Cf. above, § 5.

TRUTH AS CORRESPONDENCE 23

perhaps of imperfectly articulate, vague, and more or
less unmediated feeling — as the common environment
which is ' the world ' of myself and my fellows. The
other factor is present to my mind — in the form of
a reflective judgement — as the distinctly conceived
synthesis of Thing and Property, Elements and Rela
tion, Cause and Effect, &c. This second factor is the
result of more or less definite analysis of some portion
of the first ; and, as thus involving a determinate
operation of my mind, it is par excellence the i mental '
factor. Some subordinate portion of the first (or ' real ')
factor exhibits an inner structure which I recognize
as repeated within the judged (or i mental ') factor.
This identity of inner structure is the 'correspondence',
which I call the l truth ' of my judgement.

If the above account is in outline correct, the ' facts ',
to which my judgement is to correspond, are the
expression in and through my mind of that which is
also expressed in and through the minds of my fellows.
Thus I am divided in the experience which we call
'truth' ; and, in respect to one side1 of the division, I
am the vehicle of a content which is universal and by
no means merely my private affair. At the same time,
though I am divided, I in the division overreach it.
For I am aware of the two factors and of their corre
spondence ; and I hold the personal or private nature
of the one factor over against the impersonal or
universal nature of the other, and compare the two.
It is this identification of our full self with the content
which we recognize as expressing itself in other selves,
as well as with the content of our personal judgement,
volition, or emotion, which gives to all human experience,
speculative, moral, and artistic, its paradoxical character.
And it is the recognized universality of the content of

1 i.e. in respect to one side at least. The same holds with
regard to the other side also, as we shall see directly (below, § 9),

24 THE NATURE OF TEUTH

the ' real ' factor which constitutes its * reality ' for
me, and gives it the independent and constraining
force in virtue of which I test the truth of my judge
ment by it and not its t reality ' by my judgement.

So much, perhaps, may be admitted as a rough
description of the conditions under which I claim truth
for my judgement. But the ' correspondence-notion '
attempts to render this description more precise by
offering a definite theory as to the nature of the test
which my judgement must satisfy if it is to be true.
The test, according to it, is identity of structure within
the two factors. My judgement is true (is rightly
regarded by me as true) if it, as a whole of parts,
exhibits an inner structure identical with the inner
structure of the ' real ' factor, or of some subordinate
whole within that factor.

§ 9. It is this determinate theory as to the nature of
the test which characterizes the correspondence-notion ;
and on this determinate theory, as we have now to see,
that notion is wrecked.

We have, in the first place, wrongly assumed that
the ' mental ' factor is purely personal ; and we have
wrongly contrasted it with the t real ' factor as purely
universal. The contrast cannot be maintained so
sharply. For the ' real world ', which forms the felt
background of myself and my fellows, enters into, or
-is, the experience of each of us in a fashion uniquely
tinged with our respective individualities. And on the
other hand, the ' mental ' factor, i. e. the reflective
synthesis of elements consciously analysed which is
my judgement, is never ' purely personal'. The ' purely
personal ' would be strictly incommunicable ; but
judgements, even * my private opinions', are essentially
communicable, and every element and feature of them
is, on one side of itself, the common inheritance of
many or all of us. And, in any case, the i mental '

TKUTH AS COKBESPONDENCE 25

factor, however private and personal, is for me an
object distinguishable and distinguished from ' myself,
and so far universalized.

This defect in our account may, however, easily
be remedied. It is mainly a question of emphasis.
Everything, we may agree, which is in any sense

* real ', possesses the dual character of universality and
unique individuality ; and without this dual character
nothing can enter into our experience. But the
i common content ', the ' universal idea ', the ' world '
or whatever we call this dual matter of experience,
expresses itself doubly in my consciousness when
I judge. And l truth ' means the correspondence
between these two expressions, each of which is a
more or less imperfect embodiment of the dual con
tent expressed.1 In one expression the content is
imperfectly individualized, and appears for me in
the form of vague unmediated feeling ; in the other
expression it is imperfectly universal in the form of
' my own private ' opinion.

But, in the second place, we have made an assump
tion which we cannot justify ; and yet, without it, we
cannot maintain the correspondence-notion. For we
have been forced to regard correspondence as identity
of structure, and to attribute truth to my judgement
because it repeats in its internal organization the
inner structure of the ' real ' factor, or of some
subordinate whole within that. Now if there is no
difference in the two factors, there clearly is no

* correspondence '—'there is identity. But if there is
a difference, e.g. what we loosely called a i material '
difference 2, how can there also be identity of structure ?
For ' structure ' is a name for scheme of inner relations,
and relations which really relate different elements
cannot be identical, i.e. cannot be identical if the

1 Cf. above, § 5, p. 16. 2 Above, § 3, p. 10.

26 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

differences of the elements are differences of them qua
related. Or we may put the matter less abstractly.
On the one side we have a whole of experience at the
level of feeling ; and, on the other side, a whole of
experience at the level of reflective thought. To say
that there is (or may be) identity of structure is to
maintain that these experiences are different matters
subsumed under an identical form. And whatever
may be said of such a conception in general, at least
it does not do justice to the unity of an experience-
whole. Whatever may be the case with other i wholes',
at least a felt-whole, or again a thought-whole, are not
elements together with a scheme of relations. Such wholes
at least cannot be analysed into materials subsumed
under an external form — i. e. a form which can be
what it is, unaffected by the differences of the material
which it unifies.

For the present we must leave the matter here.
A full discussion would in the end turn on the problem
of the possibility of ' purely external relations ', which
provisionally we have agreed to deny.1 If that denial
be maintained in respect to the relations within such
wholes as are in question — a fortiori, if it be maintained
in regard to all relations without restriction — it follows
that the correspondence-notion must be rejected. It
may be a convenient working hypothesis under which
to think of the ' truth ' of my judgement, but it cannot
pretend to be an adequate account of what ' truth ' in
such cases means.

We have still to consider the second case mentioned
above 2, and we can then sum up our results.

§ 10. A scientific theory, or an accepted judgement,
is regarded as 'true' because it corresponds to the
' nature of things ' or to ' Eeality '.

1 Cf. above, § 3, pp. 11, 12 ; and see below, pp. 43 ff., 49.

2 § 8, p. 22.

TEUTH AS CORKESPONDENCE 27

The truth of my judgement, as we considered it in
§ 8, depended upon its ' correspondence' with a universal
content which was present to me in the form of feeling.
We have seen that the precise meaning of this
correspondence will not bear investigation ; but at any
rate there seems in this case a more or less definite
sense in the antithesis between a primarily-universal
and a primarily-individual factor.1

But assuming that my judgement has, for myself
and for others, substantiated its claim to truth in the
sense that it is recognized and adopted by all intelligent
people, we have an i accepted judgement ' or a ' scientific
theory '. And here again the correspondence-notion
steps in, and invites us to agree that truth means
correspondence between the judgement and ' Eeality '
or the ' nature of things '.

The i mental' factor here, i.e. the judgement, is
unambiguously a logical content or meaning. Its psy
chological aspect, its * existence ' as the actual judge
ments of particular persons, is ignored as irrelevant.
If awkward questions are asked, we shall probably
be told that it is the expression of i intelligence
as such ' or of the ' universal consciousness ' ; or that
it is 'what every one must and does think under
certain assumptions '. Assuming e. g. certain definitions
and axioms, the systematic outcome of which is known
as ' Euclidean Space ', every one must judge that i the
internal angles of a triangle are together equal to two
right angles'. Under those assumptions this judgement

1 We might have looked for the truth of my judgement in its
correspondence with other people's judgements. But (a) the
mere fact that many people hold (or express) the same or similar
opinions cannot make those opinions true ; and (b) this fact must
be for me, if I am to claim truth for my judgement in virtue of
its correspondence with theirs. And it can be for me, in the end,
only in the form explained, viz. as a more or less uiimediated
feeling, an atmosphere invading all of us.

28 THE NATURE OF TEUTH

is a truth for all. It is a necessary element in a
scientific theory of Euclidean Space ; divergence from
it is error.

But what is the l Eeality ', correspondence with
which constitutes the truth of this judgement? If you
say ' Euclidean Space ', I answer that * Euclidean
Space ' itself is a system of such judgements, and that
the truth of each of them is constituted by its
coherence with all the others, but not by its ' corre
spondence' with anything external to the system. And
if you say ' The real extended world is the Keality in
question ', is this not a mere name for the confused
unmediated experience of which the clear articulate
expression is the system of Euclidean geometry ? If so,
the position in which we found ourselves in §§ 8 and 9 is
repeated, and we are driven to the same conclusion.1

J 11. We may now sum up results and report progress.
We found that the notion of i correspondence ' implied
two factors, each of which was a whole-of-many coher
ing teleologically ; and thus ' correspondence ' seemed
to become identity of structure, or plan of organization,
in different materials. Taking ' correspondence' in this
sense, we saw that the nature of the structure, or the
purpose or idea which it unfolded, emerged more and
more into importance as the essence of truth, whilst
the fact of correspondence showed itself as at most
a symptom of truth. A true description or a good
portrait seemed to depend for their truth upon the
fullness of the significance embodied for the appre
hending mind in the two expressions ; and this result,
as we pointed out, would lead to the notion of truth
as determined by systematic coherence. We had pre
viously decided to reject for the present the view that
truth is a quality of something real without any relation
to its recognition by mind (§§ 2-5).

1 For a fuller treatment see below, chapter 3, part ii.

TKUTH AS CORRESPONDENCE 29

We then passed on to consider the correspondence-
notion as it would apply to 'true' judgement. We
found that here one of the factors was explicitly ' men
tal ', and that it was vital to determine in what sense
it was both ' mental ' and i real ', and again in what
sense the other factor was par excellence l real ' and yet
not unrelated to mind (§6). In order to deal with
this problem, we found it necessary to call attention
to the dual nature of human experience, its universal
ity and independence, and yet also its individuality
and its dependence on personal and private conditions
(§ 7). We then endeavoured to express the nature of
the two factors, in the case of a judgement of mine
claiming truth, in terms of the result of this discus
sion. We found that when they are so expressed
their antithesis (as 'mental* and 'real') possesses a
more or less intelligible meaning. But we discovered
that the idea of an identical structure in different ma
terials is quite inadequate when applied to the wholes
in question, viz. felt- and thought-wholes. And thus
the whole notion of correspondence, however useful
as a working hypothesis, breaks down if regarded as
an adequate conception of truth (§§8, 9). Finally we
considered the case in which a universally accepted
judgement, or a scientific theory, is supposed to be
'true' because corresponding to Eeality. And we
found that here again the notion of correspondence
must give place to the idea of systematic coherence
(§10).

Our next task, therefore, would naturally be to
examine the view of truth as coherence. But, before
we do so, we ought to try to clear certain difficulties
out of the way. For (1) we have said nothing, or
nothing explicitly, about sensation. And yet, it will
be urged, the strength of the correspondence-notion
lies in its agreement with the common-sense view of

30 THE NATUKE OF TKUTH

sensation. In sensation we are in contact with Beal-
ity. TJiere we come face to face with a stubborn,
independent, controlling Keal ; and truth, in its
primary and most obvious sense, means correspon
dence or conformity of our ideas to the facts given
to us in sensation. And (2) we must endeavour to
dispose of a view which has long been haunting us :
the view that truth and falsity are qualities of certain
entities entirely independent of mind.

CHAPTER II
TRUTH AS A QUALITY OF INDEPENDENT ENTITIES

§12. OUR object in the present chapter is to
examine certain views which threaten to invalidate
our previous conclusions and to bar the way to our
further progress. In §11, we arranged these views
under two heads. There was (1) a certain theory as
to the nature of sensation, on which the correspon
dence-notion was to be irrefutably established ; and
(2) there was a certain theory as to the nature of truth,
which had nothing whatever to do with the correspon
dence-notion. We shall see, however, that both of
our enemies draw their forces from a common base ;
and it is with that base that we shall be primarily
concerned. A common assumption is made by both,
and from that assumption development proceeds in
two different ways. But one of the developments is
more or less accidental, whilst the other is the
necessary logical extension of the assumption. In the
accidental development, the common assumption is
employed as a foundation for the correspondence-
notion of truth. The other development leads to a
theory of truth so different from any of the prevailing
views that, in endeavouring to state it, I may be
accused of setting up a crude and ridiculous travesty.
And the difficulty of a fair statement is increased by
the fact that this new theory involves, and also sup
ports, a radically new Logic and Metaphysics. Thus,
in order fully to appreciate it, we should have to enter
into a new philosophical universe.

32 THE NATURE OF TRUTH

So far as I know, there does not at present exist
any systematic exposition of the new Logic and
Metaphysics. The nearest approach to a complete
exposition is to be found in the works of Mr. Bertrand
Russell. In his Philosophy of Leibniz, in various
articles in Mind, and in his Principles of Mathematics,
he constantly applies the principles of the New Philo
sophy to the solution of the problems with which he is
concerned, and to the criticism of current philosophical
views. But — no doubt quite rightly — he neither
offers, nor professes to offer, a systematic exposition of
the Logic and Metaphysics whose principles he is
applying. We are given to understand, in general,
that there is such a system, which will emerge (or
perhaps has emerged) triumphant from the gulf of
criticism which has swallowed all other philosophies.
But at present we have to construct this new system
for ourselves out of Mr. Russell's applications of it,
and such construction is necessarily precarious. At
times, indeed, Mr. Russell refers us to the writings of
Mr. G. E. Moore. But although Mr. Moore's Principia
Etliica, and his articles in Mind and elsewhere, contain
interesting indications (and more or less fragmentary
expositions) of a new Logic and Metaphysics, I have
not been able to discover in them anything like a
systematic account.

Under these circumstances I have thought it worth
while to discuss, so far as possible without personal
reference and without personal controversy, a theory
of truth which seems to me both important and
erroneous — and important mainly because of the
nature of its erroneousness. The theory in question
has been suggested to me by the writings of Messrs.
Russell and Moore, and I gratefully acknowledge my
obligation. Bat although I have made a free use of
their writings, and have not scrupled to employ their

INDEPENDENT ENTITIES 33

terminology wherever it seemed convenient, I have
no desire to attribute to them a view which perhaps
they do not hold, nor to impute to them those logical
and metaphysical positions on which that view, as
I conceive it, depends. Still less must the reader
suppose that the logical affiliation here ascribed to
that view — its derivation from the assumption that
i experiencing makes no difference to the facts' — either
is, or would be, recognized by Messrs. Eussell and
Moore. For my purposes it is irrelevant whether any
philosopher actually holds the view which I am about
to discuss. It seems to me to follow logically from
an assumption which is commonly made, and to
involve certain logical and metaphysical principles
which are worth examining. Occasionally I have
criticized statements quoted verbatim from Mr. Eus
sell, because they seemed to me the best expositions
and illustrations of the type of theory in question.
But though I may thus have been led to adopt at
times a polemical tone, and to attack the views of an
actual philosopher, my primary object is to conduct
an impersonal examination of a certain assumption and
an impersonal criticism of certain logical and meta
physical principles.

§ 13. In sensation — so we are to assume — we are
in direct contact with the Eeal. The Eeal is indeed
1 given' to us, and it is also 'accepted.' But what
is given to us in sensation is independent of the
acceptance and of the recipients, and is, in that
independence, the stubborn authority which controls
in the end all our thinking, feeling, and doing. The
Eeal in sensation is present to a sentient conscious
ness : for * sensation ' is a complex, which includes
1 something' and also the l awareness' thereof. But
the nature of the Eeal is in no way affected by
its presence to the sentient consciousness : i. e. our

34 THE NATUEE OF TRUTH

'acceptance', if it is not purely passive, at least in
no way modifies the i something' which we accept.
Sensation — the sentient apprehension of a sensible
quality — must be analysed into two simple factors
and a relation. The factors are (1) the Quality — a
simple, timeless, unchangeable, independent Eeal ;
and (2) the Apprehension — something i mental ' or
' psychical '. And if we would avoid the errors of
Idealism, we must remember that, although in the
complex these factors are united by a relation, each
factor is (and remains what it is) independently of
the other. Thus it is the first duty of any sound
philosophy to separate the factors, and to study each
strictly by itself. As to the relation, we must observe
that it is a unique, not further definable, relation. It
is that peculiar, distinctive relation which obtains
between ' subject ' and ' object ' in Experience ; and
its character is such that it holds the related factors
together, and yet also leaves them completely un
touched and unaffected by the union.1

The above ' assumption' is simply a plain statement
of the facts. It will be welcomed by common sense,
and it will clear the most formidable difficulties out of
the path of philosophy. And, first, we may indicate
how it is to be used in defence of the correspondence-
notion of truth. By analysis of our sentient experience
we can separate out the indubitably Eeal ; and this
is the ultimate standard, correspondence with which
constitutes truth. When we talk of the l facts of the
case ', of the * actual historical events ', of the ' original '
of a portrait, or of ' the nature of things ' which science
is to represent, we mean, in the last resort, this Eeal
given in sensation. No doubt this Eeal, as we ex
perience it, is always given in relation to our apprehen
sion, and always in conjunction and combination with
1 Cf., however, below, p. 50, note.

INDEPENDENT ENTITIES 35

much that is 'the work of the mind'. But we must
separate out what is ' given ' from that which is super
imposed upon it ; and again we must cut this purified
'given' clear from the manner of its acceptance and
the nature of the recipients. The work of separation
and dissection is hard, but not impossible; and the
residuum is a standard whose independent Eeality is
beyond suspicion.

The only adequate answer to this defence of the
correspondence-notion is the criticism of its assumption ;
and I shall enter upon that presently. But, in the
meantime, it should be noticed that, even granting the
assumption, some of the chief difficulties in the corre
spondence-notion are still unsolved. For, assuming
the unchangeable and independent Eeal immediately
given in sensation, what is to correspond to it, and
what is the nature of the correspondence ? Is the
' mental factor ' (e. g. in a ' true ' system of judgements)
a complex tissue woven with mental schemata of syn
thesis out of psychical replicas of the Real given
in sensation? Or are there no psychical replicas, no
mental counterparts of the given Eeal? and is the
' mental factor ' a mere form, a mere scheme of prin
ciples of synthesis ? It seems necessary to adopt one
of these two alternatives ; and yet, whichever we
choose, ' correspondence ' is meaningless. For the
'mental factor' either is entirely, or essentially contains,
a formative structure which just is not the structure of
the Eeal. And ' correspondence ', as we saw, requires
identity of structure in the corresponding factors.

We may next proceed to develop our * assumption '
in a far more radical fashion ; and, cutting ourselves
loose from the correspondence-notion altogether, we
may formulate a new theory of truth.

§ 14. For, if we can sever the ' Eeal ' in sensation
from everything ' mental ', we are logically entitled to

C 2

36 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

go further. It is ridiculous to suppose that my vision
makes the greenness of the tree, or my hearing the
harmony of the chord. No doubt, to be experienced, the
greenness must be seen, and the harmony must be
heard. But the fundamental postulate of all Logic is
expressed in our l assumption ' : viz. that the i ex
periencing' makes no difference to the facts. The
notes of the chord are in harmony, or the harmony is
there, whether I hear them or not. No matter whether
I see it or not, the tree is green. Its greenness is
there, an independent unchangeable1 fact. Now the
same holds in principle of Judgement and Inference.
For it is ridiculous to suppose that the equality of the
interior angles of a triangle to two right angles is made
by me in the judging; or that this ' truth' became
true when the first geometer discovered it, and would
cease to be true if no one believed it. No doubt, to be
experienced, the equality must be judged, or in some
way apprehended. But we must sever the psychical
apprehension from the ' truth ' apprehended. The
' truth' is there, timelessly, unchangeably, indepen
dently itself ; a complex, whose simple constituent
elements yet eternally and inseparably cohere to form
a single entity. Such an entity is possessed of a
genuine unity ; since, although for analysis it is com
plex, it cannot be compounded out of the simple
elements which analysis reveals as its constituents.
It may be called a ' Proposition ', to distinguish it
alike from the simple entities (e. g. the real qualities,
which are given in sensation), and from that which
current Logic calls a ' Judgement'. A i judgement', in
ordinary logical usage, is a hybrid, in which psychical
elements (such as belief, apprehension, &c.) are un
warrantably blended with the purely logical fact, the

1 The tree may cease to be green, but the ' greenness ' itself is
eternal and unchangeable.

INDEPENDENT ENTITIES 37

complex and yet single entity which we have called
a ' Proposition '.

' Truth ' and ' Falsity ', in the only strict sense of the
terms, are characteristics of * Propositions '. Every
Proposition, in itself and in entire independence of
mind, is true or false ; and only Propositions can be
true or false. The truth or falsity of a Proposition is,
so to say, its flavour, which we must recognize, if we
recognize it at all, immediately : much as we appreciate
the flavour of pineapple or the taste of gorgonzola.1
1 Knowledge ' is a complex, involving true propositions
and belief : i. e. it is the appreciation of the flavour of
these entities, combined with retention of the true and
rejection of the false propositions. And ' Error ' is a
complex, involving false propositions and belief: i.e.
it is the misappreciation of flavours, combined with
rejection of the true and retention of the false proposi
tions. The true and the false — i. e. propositions, their
eternal relations, their combination into inferences, &c.,
&c. — are the subject-matter of Logic. Psychical phe
nomena — e.g. belief, apprehension, &c. — are the subject-
matter of Psychology. Knowledge and Error are the
subject-matter of Epistemology, a complex science
involving both Logic and Psychology.

Can we further describe the difference between true

1 Of. Russell, The Principles of Mathematics, I, Preface, p. v.
'The discussion of indefinables — which forms the chief part of
philosophical logic — is the endeavour to see clearly, and to make
others see clearly, the entities concerned, in order that the mind
may have that kind of acquaintance with them which it has with
redness or the taste of a pineapple.' (Cf. ib. p. 129.) What is
here said of the primary propositions, or ' indefinables ', appears
to be extended elsewhere to all propositions. Cf. Russell on
'Meinong's Theory of Complexes and Assumptions' (III), in
Mind,f N.S., No. 52, p. 523: 'It may be said— and this is,
I believe, the correct view — that there is no problem at all in
truth and falsehood ; that some propositions are true and some
false, just as some roses are red and some white ; that belief is
a certain attitude towards propositions, which is called knowledge
when they are true, error when they are false.' Cf. also ib., p. 524.

38 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

and false propositions ? Both, as we have seen, are
eternal unchangeable entities : and it seems as if there
were nothing more to be said, except that they just do
differ, precisely qua true and false. The difference is
immediate, must be apprehended intuitively, and there
is an end of the matter. Yet we may endeavour to
carry our analysis a little further. For a true proposi
tion, we may say, involves an element which is not
contained in a false proposition ; and it is this ad
ditional element which constitutes its truth. The
element in question attaches to the Proposition in
itself : i. e. is a constituent of its being for Logic, and
not for Psychology. We may adopt Mr. Eussell's
terminology, and call this element i assertion', if we
remember that it is ' assertion ' in a strictly logical and
non-psychological sense — whatever that may mean. The
presence of the same element will serve to distinguish
a genuine Proposition (e. g. ' Caesar died ') from the
content of a Proposition from which the life of the
Proposition has vanished (e.g. ' Caesar's death').1

1 Cf. Eussell, Principles of Mathematics, § 38. ' The question is :
How does a proposition differ by being actually true from what
it would be as an entity if it were not true ? It is plain that
true and false propositions alike are entities of a kind, but that
true propositions have a quality not belonging to false ones —
a quality which, in a non-psychological sense, may be called
being asserted. Yet there are grave difficulties in forming a con
sistent theory on this point, for if assertion in any way changed
a proposition, no proposition which can possibly in any context
be unasserted could be true, since when asserted it would become
a different proposition. But this is plainly false ; . . . Leaving
this puzzle to logic, however, we must insist that there is
a difference of some kind between an asserted and an unasserted
proposition/ Cf. also § 52: 'But there is another' [i.e. non-
psychological] ' sense of assertion, very difficult to bring clearly
before the mind, and yet quite undeniable, in which only true
propositions are asserted. True and false propositions alike are
in some sense entities, and are in some sense capable of being
logical subjects ; but when a proposition happens to be true, it has
a further quality, over and above that which it shares with false
propositions, and it is this further quality which is what I mean

INDEPENDENT ENTITIES 39

§15. The theory of truth which has just been
sketched rests upon an assumption claiming to express
' the fundamental postulate of all Logic '. Once grant
that * experiencing makes no difference to the facts',
and the theory inevitably follows. And you cannot
refuse to grant a principle of this kind — so it may be
urged — if you are to have a Logic at all.1 It is
difficult to argue convincingly against such a position.
For if an assumption is the basis of all Logic, then
arguments directed against it appear, by a very natural
confusion, to be eo ipso devoid of logical cogency. The
assumption, in fact, gets established by a kind of
ontological proof.

I shall, however, endeavour to show : (1) that the
assumption, in any sense in which it is true, is irre
levant to the theory of truth which professes to be
based on it ; whilst, on the other hand, the assumption,
in the sense in which that theory uses and interprets
it, is false ; (2) that if, accordingly, this assumption be
rejected, the theory has to choose between two dis
agreeable alternatives. For either the i independent
truth ' will be and remain entirely in itself, unknown
and unknowable ; or, if known or knowable, the truth
will become a private and personal possession, depen
dent for its being upon an individual intuition which
itself is a particular psychical existent — and thus the
theory will have defeated its own object, which was to
vindicate the independence of truth.

(1) ' Experiencing makes no difference to the facts.
Sensating, conceiving, judging, leave untouched and
independent the Real Qualities sensated, and the

by assertion in a logical as opposed to a psychological sense. The
nature of truth, however, belongs no more to the principles of
mathematics than to the principles of everything else. I there
fore leave this question to the logicians with the above brief
indication of a difficulty.'

1 Of. above, § 13, p. 33 ; § 14, p. 36.

40 THE NATURE OF TEUTH

Entities conceived or judged.' How are we to interpret
this statement ? It is tolerably plain from the illustra
tions1 how * experiencing ' is interpreted. It is my
vision, my hearing, my judging — i.e. the actual sen-
sating, the actual thinking, of a particular subject at a
particular time — which are to ' make no difference to
the facts'. The tree is green, the notes form a har
monious chord, the angles are equal to two right
angles, whether I, or you, or Euclid, or any individual
subject, is or is not actually experiencing them.

It is not so plain how we are to interpret l the facts',
to which no difference is made. ' Greenness ', ' Har
mony', i Equality' are to remain eternally and
unalterably themselves, whether they are also ex
perienced or not. They are i the facts ', and they are
there independently and in themselves. But what is
their being there? Not, on the theory, ' their being
experienced ' ; for that is to mean their i being actually
sensated or judged', a mere adventitious accident of
their being there. Then does it mean * their being as
objects of possibly-actual sensating and judging ' ? Is
greenness e.g. there, in the sense that it is such that,
under determinate conditions, there is an actual
sensated green, or an actual sensating of green ? But
this would imply, in the i independent facts ', an
essential relatedness, not indeed to my sensating or
thinking qua t this ' and ' mine ', but to sensating and
thinking as the common modes in which I and you and
other individual subjects manifest their being as
conscious. And an * essential relatedness' would
mean that 'the facts', in and by themselves, are not
there at all; that what is there is something within
which the so-called ' facts ' are a partial factor, depen
dent for its being and nature on another factor, and
incapable of being 'in itself or independent. And
1 Above, § 14, p. 36.

INDEPENDENT ENTITIES 41

this other factor is of the nature of ' experiencing ',
though it is not my experiencing qua l this ' and i mine '.

Either, then, we shall have to say that the being there
of the facts is their combining with another factor (of
the nature of ' experiencing ') to constitute a whole,
whose factors involve one another; and this interpreta
tion destroys the relevancy of the assumption. For,
if our theory of truth is to follow, the facts must be
entirely in themselves and independent. Or we shall
have to maintain that the whole constituted by 'the
facts ' and ' experiencing ' (in any sense of the term) is
no genuine whole, but a mere external adjustment.
The two factors are, or may be, related ; but the
relation when, or as, it obtains, leaves each precisely
what it was, viz. absolutely in itself and independent.
The assumption, as thus interpreted, is relevant, and
the theory proceeds. But as thus interpreted the
assumption is false, conflicts with common sense, and
is in the end unmeaning.

For let us consider. Greenness1 is there, in itself;
and, though it may be sensated, its relation to the
sentient consciousness leaves it in the relation precisely
what it was when not so related, and what it will be
again when no one is sensating it. Now this does not
mean merely that greenness is essentially the same,
whether I see it or you see it : i. e. as the common
content of percipient consciousness of the human type.
Nor does it mean that greenness, whether I conceive it
or you — i. e. as the common content of human abstract
thought — is the same concept. All this may be true ;
but it is not relevant. The theory maintains that
greenness is what it is in complete independence of any
and all forms of experiencing, and indeed of everything
other than itself. It means that greenness neither

1 I use the term * greenness ' to mean the eternal unchangeable
quality * green ', in distinction from this or that instance of green.

42 THE NATURE OF TEUTH

itself is, nor ever enters as a factor into, a whole such
that the determinate natures of its constituents re
ciprocally involve one another. Greenness is, for the
theory, an ultimate entity in the nature of things,
which has its being absolutely in itself. How, under
these circumstances, greenness can yet sometimes so
far depart from its sacred aloofness as to be appre
hended (sensated or conceived) ; and how, when this
takes place, the sensating or conceiving subject is
assured that its immaculate perseitas is still preserved
—these are questions to which apparently the only
answer is the dogmatic reiteration of the supposed fact :
' It is so ; and if you cannot see it, you are wanting in
philosophical insight.' But the plain man, as well as
the philosopher, has his ' insight'. He will tell you
that greenness is to him a name for a complex fact, the
factors of which essentially and reciprocally determine
one another. And he will say that if you choose to
select one factor out of the complex, and to call it

* greenness ', there need be no dispute about the term ;
but, as thus isolated, your greenness is an abstraction,
which emphatically, in itself and as such, is not there
nor anywhere. If you appeal to your doctrine of a

* unique relation', and urge that greenness both 4s there '
in itself and also is (at times or always) in relation to
sentient or conceptual consciousness, he will ask you
how you reconcile this 'both' and 'also'. He will
question in what sense it is the same greenness, which is
loth in itself and also in relation to something else.
And, if you deny that there is here anything to
reconcile, he will appeal to his l insight '. Who shall
say that his is the insight of a lying prophet, whilst
yours bears the divine stamp of truth ?*

1 It is no answer, from the point of view of the theory in
question, to say : ' Our insight is justified by the consistency of
the system of judgements into which it develops.' For if syste-

INDEPENDENT ENTITIES 43

§ 16. It is worth while, perhaps, to pursue the criti
cism of this assumption a little further. Greenness is
an entity in itself. And though, as experienced, it is
related to a sentient consciousness, yet even in that
relation it remains in itself and unaffected by the
sentience. Is it then entirely irrelevant to the nature
of greenness what the nature of the sentience may
be? Clearly, the sentience to which greenness can
be related is ' vision ', not i hearing '. But we are to
understand that this restriction is not based on the
nature of greenness as such, but is just a fact. And
presumably also the restriction in the range of the
sentience — the restriction, e.g. of vision to colour, of
hearing to sound, of this type of vision to greenness,
&c. — is just a fact, which in no way enters into the
nature of the sentience. Vision and greenness come
together, and we have a * seeing of green ', or a * sen-
sated green ' ; but the meeting of the two is cool and
unconcerned, and indicates no affinity in their natures.
Their meeting is one of those ultimate inexplicabilities
of which — on some theories at any rate — the Universe
is full.

The de facto restriction in the range of relata on
either side seems, indeed, to go much further. For,
on the one hand, greenness does not manifest its
independent and simple nature to the vision of every
subject: a colour-blind subject e.g. sees (or thinks he
sees) * redness '. Even within the ' normal ' vision *, it
seems given to very few — to a ' philosopher ' here and
there — to see the self-identical simple Quality, which

matic consistency, or coherence, is to be the test of truth, the
whole position is abandoned. * Truth ' is then no longer an
immediate quality of Propositions in themselves. On the appeal
to ' Insight ', see below, §§ 18 and 19.

What * normal ' means, for the theory which we are consider
ing, is a difficult question. Is 'the normal vision' that of the
majority? Or is the normality, e.g. of my vision, guaranteed to
me by immediate inspection ?

44 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

is greenness. The painter sees many different green
nesses where the untrained eye sees but one. And if
the painter finds a name for each different shade, and
recognizes each as an ultimate simple Quality, who
will guarantee that his discrimination is both legiti
mate and adequate ; that each of his Simples is really
different from all its neighbours, and that none of his
Simples can possibly itself prove manifold ?

On the other hand, that my vision here and now
should be a vision of greenness and not e.g. of red
ness ; still more that it should be a vision of the ulti
mate simple greenness, and not of a confused complex
of many undiscriminated shades of greenness : this,
if it takes place, takes place by a miraculous de facto
coincidence. And it requires a correspondingly mira
culous * insight ' to assure me that it takes place.

We may at this point detect in the New Philosophy
a strong family likeness to an extreme Occasionalism,
without the Deus ex machina to render Occasionalism
plausible. Sentience has been pulverized into atomic
sensatings, and the object or sphere of sentience into
atomic Qualities. Atom on one side comes together with
Atom on the other side ; but why this Atom should
be related to that, or indeed any Atom to any other,
is a question which cannot be answered. It cannot
be answered, for there is no rational ground for the
relation. The meeting, the relation, between this
Atom and that is a coincidence, which just happens
or which de facto is. We must take it on faith ; for
we are told that it is, and those who tell us tell us
also that they are possessed of philosophical insight.1

1 Of. Russell, ' Meinong's Theory of Complexes and Assump
tions ' (III), Mind, N.S., No. 52, p. 519 : ' And this theory would
render more intelligible the curious fact that the apprehension of
simples, so far from being easy, is possible only to minds with a high
degree of philosophical capacity.' (Italics mine.) How is the i degree
of philosophical capacity ' measured ?

INDEPENDENT ENTITIES 45

§ 17. But we shall be accused of misrepresentation.
1 You are neglecting', we shall be told, 'a vital dis
tinction, which our theory emphasizes. What ac
tually exists, what actually takes place, is always
complex. The simple Qualities do not, as such, exist.
They have being, or " are ", eternally, timelessly, and
not in place. Instances of them — actual cases or oc
currences of them — are compounded of other elements
besides their simple selves. What is actually being
seen, exists and is a complex. The actual seeing
occurs, and it too is a complex. Greenness in relation
to this or these absolute points of Space, and that or
those absolute moments of Time, is a complex which
exists as a particular case of greenness : this green on
that leaf here and now. Vision here and now, or then
and there, is a complex fact, a particularized occurrence
of the Simple Sentience which is related to the Simple
Quality. We have insisted on this distinction, and we
have described the peculiar relations of "occupying"
Time and Space, which are involved.'

I confess that I have no acquaintance with ' absolute
moments ' and * absolute points '. What an absolute
moment or an absolute point may be, how it is
distinguished from other absolute moments or points,
how it is recognized, or how anything can be said
about it which will serve to fix its absolute indivi
duality : of all this I am ignorant, and I have not yet
found any one to enlighten me. But for the sake of
argument I will assume that there are such entities,
and that the objector has an immediate and infallible
acquaintance with some (if not with every one) of
them. Still it seems to me that my criticism retains
its force. For now it applies to the combination of
the Atomic Simples, which constitute the existing
complexes. That these Atomic Simples should combine
to form a complex — or indeed that any Simples should

46 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

combine — is a de facto coincidence, an arbitrary irra
tional fact, if it be 'a fact' at all. The objector himself
is a mere unfounded coincidence : a ' class of psychical
existents ' related to certain absolute points of Space,
and related also successively to certain absolute
moments of Time.1 And if I am told that facts
are often irrational, and that these de facto coinci
dences are and must be accepted, still I must protest
against the barbarous treatment to which the Simple
Entities are subjected. How can you play fast and
loose with their simplicity ? How can you treat them
as each absolutely simple and independent, and also
as related to one another to form a complex? Greenness
here and now is this complex fact, this case of green
actually existing. The same greenness there and then is
that different complex fact, that case of green actually

1 Cf. Kussell, Principles of Mathematics, I, p. 523 : ' What we
called, in chapter vi, the class as one, is an individual, provided
its members are individuals: the objects of daily life, persons,
tables, chairs, apples, &c., are classes as one. (A person is a class
of psychical existents, the others are classes of material points,
with perhaps some reference to secondary qualities.) ' The addi
tion of the temporal and spatial relations of the ' class of psychical
existents' is suggested by what Mr. Eussell says elsewhere (e.g.
chap, liii) : for a * person ' is related to a Body, and a Body is
presumably a class of l terms which occupy both points and
instants '. But a ' class of psychical existents ', with or without
this addition, is an 'unfounded coincidence' in the sense of my
criticism.

A somewhat different account of personal identity is tentatively
propounded at p. 470 : ( Thus if the mind is anything, and if it
can change, it must be something persistent and constant, to
which all constituents of a psychical state have one and the
same relation. Personal identity could be constituted by the
persistence of this term, to which all a person's states (and
nothing else) would have a fixed relation' ... I regret that I
cannot understand this passage. Is the ' persistent term ' a simple
entity within the personality, differing in its relation to the person
from his other states solely by its persistence ? Or is this ' term ' —
as Mr. Eussell's first sentence seems to say — identical with the
whole mind ? If so, are the ' constituents of a psychical state ', the
' person's states ', not mental at all, or, if mental, within another
mind?

INDEPENDENT ENTITIES 47

existing. And again, neither here nor there, neither
now nor then, the same greenness ' is ' (we must not say
i exists '), pure and simple and self-contained, one of the
ultimate components of the Universe. The temporal
and spatial relations, I further understand you to say,
are in all cases precisely and numerically the same
relations. The same greenness is united, in the two
cases, by two relations (each precisely and numerically
the same) to a different pair of points and a different
pair of moments. The same greenness and ' precisely and
numerically the same' relations enter as constituents
into an indefinite number of different complexes.1

1 Cf. e.g. Russell, l.c., pp. 51, 52 : 'I conclude, then, that the
relation affirmed between A and B in the proposition "A differs
from B " is the general relation of difference, and is precisely and
numerically the same as the relation affirmed between C and D in
" C differs from D ". And this doctrine must be held, for the
same reasons, to be true of all other relations: relations do not
have instances, but are strictly the same in all propositions in
which they occur/ I have assumed that the simple Qualities
(like Relations) 'do not have instances': e.g. that the ' greenness*
which is a constituent of this case of green is 'precisely and
numerically the same ' as the ' greenness ' which is a constituent
of that case of green, and also as 'greenness' pure and simple.
This green and that green may be called * numerically diverse in
stances ' of the simple universal l greenness ' ; but their numerical
diversity (as I understand) is due to the different points and
moments involved, and is not strictly a numerical difference in
the 'greenness' which is a constituent of them. Mr. Russell,
in a written reply which he has been good enough to send to
me, repudiates the above interpretation of his doctrine. He says
that his argument applies only to Relations ; that on the question
of 'particular greennesses' he has no opinion either way; and that
he does not deny that 'greenness' exists. But if the simple
Qualities (e.g. 'greenness') exist, the argument of §§ 15, 16 applies
without any qualification, and I have no need to repeat it here.
And the question whether ' greenness ' has or lias not numerically
diverse instances of itself, is of no importance. For whichever
alternative Mr. Russell may finally decide to adopt, his theory
is equally impossible. If the simple ' greenness ' becomes numeri
cally multiple in the different complexes of which it forms
a constituent, how can it be said to be 'unaffected' by being
related to different entities ? whilst, if it does not become numeri
cally multiple, how can it — a simple numerically identical entity —
enter into different existent complexes ?

48 THE NATUBE OF TKUTH

In this account of the union of Simple Entities to
form Complexes, I can see nothing but a statement
of the problem in terms which render its solution
inconceivable. If you tell me that a penny in my
pocket is ' the same ' coin as a penny in yours, I agree
that in a sense this is true enough. But if for the penny
you substitute a simple eternal entity, and then go
on to maintain that this simple self-identical entity is
both in my pocket and in yours, and also in no place
and at no time, I can only protest that a simplicity of
this kind is too deep for me to fathom. Nor does it
make the least difference if you call your simple
entity a ' universal '. And if, finally, you insist that
the relation of the simple entity to the points of
Space which are my pocket, is 'precisely and numerically
the same ' as its relation to the points of Space which
are your pocket, I must admit that I am unable to
distinguish a ' precise numerical identity ' of this kind
from numerical diversity.

If, on the other hand, each different complex in
volves different relations and different constituents,
and each relation and each constituent is a simple
entity, then (I suggest to you) the game is up. For
then the Universe is really and unambiguously a mul
tiplicity of Simples, and there is neither universality
nor unity anywhere, except the unity of the units.
Each Simple Element is what it professes to be, abso
lutely one, absolutely itself, absolutely other than every
thing else. And there, where your theory begins, it
must also end. A Logic of abstract identity has car
ried you where it carried Antisthenes — beyond the reach
of argument, and beyond the reach of knowledge.

For any monistic philosophy the fundamental diffi
culty is to find intelligible meaning within its system
for the relative independence of the differences of
the One. For any pluralistic philosophy the funda-

INDEPENDENT ENTITIES 49

mental difficulty is to render any union of its ultimate
simple entities intelligible without destroying their
simplicity. In the first case we have One, and find
it difficult to reconcile with its Unity the being of
a variety or plurality within it. In the second case
we have Many, and find it difficult, whilst retaining
the simplicity and the independence of the elements
of the Many, to recognize the being and the unity of
anything not simple. With the difficulties of Monism
I have here no special concern. I will only say that the
Monist could i solve ' his difficulties with far fewer
ultimate indefinables and immediate intuitions than
the present pluralistic theory makes free to assume,
though he would perhaps not call it a ' solution'. But
what I here wish to point out is this : the present
theory rests its account of the complex facts upon
certain assumptions, which are simply and solely
statements of the problem to be solved. Thus, it
insists that the union of the Independent Simples is
a union by external relations ; and i external relation '
is a name for the problem to be solved. The problem
is, ' How can elements, each absolutely simple and in
itself, coalesce to form a complex in any sense a unity? '
And the answer given is, 'By being externally related';
i. e. by coalescing to form a unity and yet not ceas
ing to be independent. Again, ' How can that, which
is independent, yet be apprehended and known as
independent ? ' The theory answers : i In virtue of
the unique relation of "experiencing" to the object
experienced'; i.e. in virtue of an immediate apprehen
sion which is just of the miraculous nature demanded
for the solution of the problem. For this ' unique
relation', when you ask what it is, is precisely the
relation which would have to characterize an apprehension,
if it apprehended its object and yet left that object in
dependent. And finally, there is a problem as to how

JOACHIM

50 THE NATURE OF TRUTH

the simple, eternal, and self-identical can enter as a con
stituent into complexes, which are changing, different,
and many. And the theory answers, 'By being related,
in a not further explicable manner, to the different
points and moments '. But these inexplicable rela
tions are mere names for the problem. For they are
simply formulations of the assertion that the simple,
eternal, and self-identical is yet also a constituent of
many different complexes, connected with many
different places and times.1

§18. (2) I have endeavoured to show that the
assumption that ' experiencing makes no difference
to the facts ' is either false, or irrelevant to the theory
of truth which we are here discussing. And if my
arguments have carried conviction, the remainder of
my task will not be difficult. For it will not be hard
to show that this theory, which set out to vindicate

1 Hitherto I have assumed that the relation of ' experiencing '

to the 'facts' is to be external in the sense that it is to leave

both relata untouched and independent. Mr. Kussell, however,

in his article on 'Meinong's Theory', &c. (Mind, N.S., No. 52,

p. 510), says : ' But the peculiarity of the cognitive relation . . .

lies in this : that one term of the relation is nothing but an

awareness of the other term — an awareness which may be either

that of presentation or that of judgment. This makes the

relation more essential, more intimate, than any other ; for the

relatedness seems to form part of the veiy nature of one of

the related terms, namely of the psychical term.' I confess

that this 'essential' and 'intimate' relation looks to me like

a miracle postulated ad hoc, and a miracle strangely discordant

with the philosophical position which it is designed to support.

Mr. Russell's description of the cognitive relation appears to mean

that, if A be the psychical term and B the other term, then A's

very nature involves B, but B does not involve A. And although

.A's very nature involves J5, it involves a, B in itself OT a B which

is by its very nature not related to A or anything. For, given A,

there is something, 'part of whose very nature' is 'relatedness':

and relatedness presumably to something definite (viz. to this

'fact', B), not to a something in general which is nothing in

particular. Yet although, given A, there is ' relatedness to B ',

the B in question must be in itself and unrelated ; for otherwise

what becomes of its ' independence ' ?

INDEPENDENT ENTITIES 51

the independence of truth, must end by making truth
a private and personal possession, dependent upon an
individual intuition which itself is a particular psy
chical existent ; unless indeed truth is to remain
entirely in itself, for ever unknown and unknowable
even to the advocates of the theory.1 Truth is a
quality of certain propositions : it attaches to these
independent entities immediately and as they are in
themselves. Propositions are true or false, and their
truth or falsity have not to wait for our recognition.
Our recognition, when it comes, is — like the apprecia
tion of a flavour — an immediate intuitive apprehension.
The truth as recognized, as known, is therefore a
matter of personal intuition — or rather of intuition
which is a psychical existent, one member of the
' class of psychical existents ' constituting a i person '.2

i But', we shall be told, i you are neglecting an
obvious distinction. For though tlie recognition, when
it comes, is intuitive, immediate, individual, and per
sonal, the truth in itself is impersonal and independent.'

Truth in itself, truth neither known nor recognized,
may be anything you please. You can say what you
like about it, and it is not worth any one's while to
contradict you ; for it remains beyond all and any
knowledge, and is a mere name for nothing. And I
hesitate to believe that the theory which we are criti
cizing worships this ' unknown God ', or maintains the
1 independence of truth' in this futile sense. The
truth, whose independence it wishes to vindicate, is
known or knowable, or in some way experienced.
' Yes ', we shall be told, ' it is apprehended by an
immediate intuition, and in the intuition is recognized
as independent of the intuition.' But this is the old
assumption that l experiencing makes no difference to
the facts ', interpreted in the sense in which it is false.

1 Cf. above, p. 39. * Cf. above, p. 46, note.

D 2

52 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

For let us consider once more what we are asked to
accept. The truth as apprehended by the intuition is
known, and known as independent. Independent of
what ? If the view means merely ' independent of the
intuition qua this act of intuiting here and now', we
may at once accept this with certain reservations. But
if this were all that the view intended, the 'true',
though not identical with the * mental' qua this
psychical occurrence, might still be essentially related
to mind. Even an Idealist Logic would agree that
truth is in this sense ' independent ' of the intuition ;
but it would draw a distinction, which its critics do not
appear to admit *, between the intuition as apprehen
sion of truth and the intuition as psychical fact, as this
act of intuiting here and now. It would not agree
that * mind ', or everything ' mental ', is nothing but this
psychical phenomenon, this psychical existent or class
of psychical existents ; nor would it admit without
qualification that truth is in no sense ' here ' or ' now ',
' this ' or l that ', but wholly and absolutely eternal,
timeless, and unchanging. The theory sets on one
side mind, everything mental or psychical ; and on the
other side the Simples (Qualities, Moments, and Points)
and the Complexes or Propositions which are ' true '
or ' false '. It interprets mind, the mental, as nothing
but psychical fact or occurrence ; and rightly refuses
to identify the true with this. But since it recognizes
nothing as mind or mental other than the mere psychical
fact qua occurrence or qua existent, it is forced to iden
tify the true with the non-mental, i. e. with that which is

1 Cf. Russell, 'Meinong's Theory', &c. (I), Mind, N.S., No. 50,
p. 204. '. . . that truth and falsehood apply not to beliefs, but
to their objects ; and that the object of a thought, even when this
object does not exist, has a Being which is in no way dependent
upon its being an object of thought : all these are theses which,
though generally rejected, can be supported by arguments which
deserve at least a refutation.' (Italics mine.)

INDEPENDENT ENTITIES 53

independent of mind altogether, unknown and unknow
able.1 And it only appears to escape this conclusion
by the postulate that l experiencing makes no difference
to the facts ' ; i.e. by assuming that in the purely
factual and individual psychical occurrence l the true '
stands revealed in its universal, eternal, and indepen
dent nature. The true stands revealed in and to this
psychical existent ; but the revelation in no way
affects the character of the existent psychical fact.
That is, and remains, barely particular in spite of the
universal character of what it apprehends ; barely
subjective, in spite of the independent being of the
true which reveals itself to it ; and a mere temporary
occurrence, although it apprehends the timeless in
its timelessness. The psychical existent may be an
intuition of truth, * belief in what is true' or know
ledge ' 2 ; or it may be a perverted and illusory intui
tion, belief in what is false or * error '. The dif
ference falls entirely on the side of what is revealed.
On the side of the mind there is in both cases alike
a phenomenon of belief, which for the psychologist-
is the same fact. The content of the intuition, if it
has a content, has nothing to do with truth or false
hood ; for the content is psychical and is the concern
of psychology, whilst truth and falsehood belong to the
entirely extra-mental. They attach to the indepen
dent propositions, and are studied by the logician.
The logician, however, is driven to the uncom
fortable conception of a t strictly logical assertion ',

1 Cf. e.g. Russell, Principles of Mathematics, I, p. 451: 'The
argument that 2 is mental requires that 2 should be essentially
an existent. But in that case it would be particular, and it
would be impossible for 2 to be in two minds, or in one mind
at two times. Thus 2 must be in any case an entity, which will
have being even if it is in no mind.'

2 Cf. Kussell, 1. c., Mind, N.S., No. 50, p. 205 ; No. 51, pp. 353,
354.

54 THE NATURE OF TRUTH

an assertion which is i non-psychological ' l ; a con
ception which, if it means anything, is an attempt to
reintroduce into the notion of truth essential related-
ness to ' mind ', and to restore to i mind ' its universal
character. The psychologist is condemned to study
mental states, psychical existents, in entire abstraction
(if they are cognitional states) from what they appre
hend or believe. And we have to introduce the
science of Epistemology (more complex than Logic or
Psychology, because it involves them both) to study
knowledge. For knowledge qua ( belief is the subject
of Psychology, and qua belief in what is true presup
poses the science of Logic.2

Now I would suggest to the advocates of this theory
that there is an unpleasant choice before them, which
they are bound to make.

(i) Are they prepared to abide by their pluralism ?
If so, the ' independent truth' — in the sense of the
unknown and unknowable truth — may figure in their
philosophy, if they think it worth while ; but the truth
as known will require a different consideration. For
the truth as known will be the truth as revealed in
and to this psychical existent. They may make their
bow to the Independent Truth ; but, except for this
empty courtesy, their theory will be indistinguishable
from extreme Subjective Idealism. Truth will be for
them dependent upon the barely particular psychical
existent, my belief or your belief.

(ii) Or do they prefer to abide by the independence
of Truth as known ? If so, let them develop to its con
sequences their conception of a ' logical assertion'; and
let them examine their assumption that ' mind ' and
the ' mental ' are nothing but particular occurrences or

1 Above, p. 38.

2 Above, p. 37. Of. e.g. Russell, I.e., Mind, N.S., No. 50,
p. 205.

INDEPENDENT ENTITIES 55

existents. They will be driven to the recognition of
a universal, which is neither a ' simple entity5 nor a
complex of simple constituents. They will begin to
suspect their pluralism, and even perhaps to distrust
the power of l inexplicable relations ' to constitute unity
in a world of atomic simples.

§ 19. The only other alternative, so far as I can see, is
to raise the old cry that ' experiencing makes no differ
ence to the facts ' ; and to insist that my immediate
intuition — this particular psychical existent — reveals
to me the eternal independent truth, and reveals also
to me that its revelation is of this kind.

I do not propose to bring forward any further argu
ments against this assumption ; but I will add a few
remarks on the meaning of ' immediate intuition '.

The bare fact that an apprehension is 'immediate*
does not, to my mind, create a presumption in favour
of its truth. On the contrary, it rouses suspicion.
For an ' immediate apprehension ' is one, the grounds
of which are not stated ; and if, in a philosophical
treatise, the grounds of a belief are not stated, there
is at least a possibility that the grounds are obscure, or
perhaps even that there are no logical grounds. If, in
a philosophical work, the author appeals to an imme
diate intuition, I inevitably suspect that his opinion
rests on mere prejudice, or at least that he is unaware
of its grounds. An ' immediate intuition ', in short, is
a belief which the believer cannot justify, or at any
rate has not yet justified, by rational grounds. An
4 immediate difference ' is a difference vaguely appre
hended ; i. e. 'immediate difference' is the name given
to an experience of difference which is as yet obscure
and imperfectly developed, because the precise identity
and the precise distinctions within the identity are
not yet fully recognized. A difference which we
accept, perhaps on rational but not yet explicit grounds,

56 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

or perhaps without any logical justification (on ' psycho
logical grounds'), is accepted ' immediately '. And
the immediacy, which attaches to our acceptance, is
transferred to that which is experienced, and the ex
perienced is called an i immediate difference'. The
difference e. g. between blue and red is for us at first
just a difference. We feel it, experience it immediately,
and there seems no more to be said. But as knowledge
grows, we can and do mediate it. A partial mediation
in the case just quoted is achieved, when we express
the physical conditions of blue and red in terms of
precise quantitative distinctions within the identity
' wave-lengths of ether '. Undoubtedly there remains
in such cases, and perhaps in all cases, a residuum
opaque to mediating thought. The Universe is one ;
but its unity is expressed and revealed in an infinity
of individual differences, which retain for the finite
mind their ' irrational flavour ', their ' immediacy ',
however far the work of rational mediation has pro
gressed. But the immediate apprehension of these
individual differences sets its problems to thought,
and is not their solution. And though thought cannot
by its mediation exhaust the data — though finite in
telligence cannot entirely overcome the opacity of its
material — it attains to truth in so far as its mediation
progresses, and not in so far as its progress is barred.

Everything which enters into human experience
may i be for ' the experiencing subject in the form of
immediacy, however inadequate that form may prove
for some of the matter which conies under it. And
because every experience may l be for ' the subject
under this form, the ' immediacy ' of an experience
can as such decide neither its truth nor its falsity.
That ' Baal is the only Lord,' that l blue differs from
red,' that * 2 + 2 = 4 ', and that i God was made man ,'
these are, or may be, all of them ' immediate expe-

INDEPENDENT ENTITIES 57

riences ' and their ' immediacy ' guarantees neither
their truth nor their falsity. The fact that anything
is experienced in the form of immediate feeling or
intuition, or on the other hand in the form of mediate
reflective thought, does not of itself approve the ex
perience as true or condemn it as false. The truth or
falsity of an experience depends, if you like to put it
so, primarily upon what the experience is ; but what
the experience is, it is as a whole J, and not in severance
from the form under which its matter is experienced.
And what 'the experience as a whole' is, can be
revealed to human subjects only in so far as that
experience is raised to the level of mediate thought.
It is in the attempt to mediate our l immediate expe
riences ' that their truth or falsity is revealed ; and
except in so far as that attempt is made, and in being
made succeeds or fails, they possess for us neither
truth nor falsity.

Thus ' blue differs from red ', and < 2 + 2 = 4 ' ; and
these ' immediate experiences ' are said to be true.
But their truth is revealed to us only in so far as they
endure the test of mediation. Their ' truth ' means
for us that a whole system of knowledge stands and
falls with them, and that in that system they survive 2
as necessary constituent elements. Again, the be
liever's intuition that l Baal is the only Lord ' is an
immediate experience, which is false. But if it be
false, its falsity does not depend upon its immediacy.
It is not because it is an emotional unmediated faith
that it is false, any more than the Christian's emotional

1 If we are to sever the form of apprehending from the matter
apprehended, we must look rather to the matter than to the form
as determining the truth or falsity of the total experience. But
the severance, I should contend, is indefensible ; and, if it is
made, the problem as to the nature of truth and falsity will
remain insoluble.

2 See below, §§ 30-7.

58 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

faith that ' God was made man ' is true (if it be true)
because of its immediacy. That the ' immediate expe
rience ' of the Baal-worshipper is false, means for us
in the end that it will not stand mediation. The
moral and religious experiences of the past and the
present (even of the Baal-worshippers themselves)
reveal themselves, when critically analysed and re
constructed, as a texture into which this immediate
intuition can in no sense be woven ; they form
a system in which this would-be truth cannot as
such survive.

No doubt there are ' immediate experiences ' which
have left mediation behind, and which sum up in
themselves, in a clarified and concentrated form, the
work of critical analysis and reflective reconstruction.
The ' beatific vision ' of the saint, the l inspiration ' of
the artist, the ' intuition ' of the scientific discoverer,
are all of them ' immediate experiences '. And, some
times at any rate, they indicate a level of consciousness
more developed (and not more inchoate) than the level
of the discursive understanding. But even so it is
not qua i immediate ' that such experiences command
the respect of the seeker after truth. Their claim to
be experiences of the truth is entitled to recognition
only in so far as their transparent form of immediate
intuition is the outcome and the sublimated expression
of rational mediation. Otherwise they are legitimate
objects of suspicion and distrust.

§20. We have rejected the view that Truth and
Falsity are qualities of independent entities, imme
diate flavours, so to say, of l propositions ' which are
by no means ' mental ' or essentially related to mind.
We have refused to admit that ' experiencing makes
no difference to the facts,' in the sense that i the facts '
are what they are in and for themselves, and in entire
independence of any and all experience of them. Ex-

INDEPENDENT ENTITIES 59

perience, we have insisted, is a unity of two factors
essentially inter-related and reciprocally involving each
other for their being and their nature. Truth and
Falsity do not attach to one of those factors in itself,
if only for the reason that neither factor is, or can be,
in itself.

With this conclusion we might be content to pass
on. But, before we do so, it will be best to guard
ourselves against a misunderstanding, which is pos
sible and indeed probable, though not really justified
by what we have said. For we may be told, that if our
opponents have erred by abstraction, we ourselves are
equally guilty. We have denied that Truth and
Falsity attach to propositions in themselves, for we
have denied that Qualities and Propositions in them
selves ' are ' anything but unreal abstractions. It may
be assumed that therefore we are bound to maintain
that Truth and Falsity attach to the psychical occur
rences, or states, of this and that finite individual as
such ; and that what ' is ', and what alone ' is ', is the
finite subject and his psychical events. In short, it
may be assumed that, since we have rejected a Eeal-
istic Pluralism, we must be advocating a Subjective
Idealism ; and that, having insisted that ' experiencing
makes a difference to the facts ', we must mean that
this or that psychical occurrence, this factual event in
or of my mind, constitutes and is the only Eeality and
the only Truth.

It will not help us to protest that my mind (as an
independent, purely self-contained and exclusive, en
tity) and my ideas (as mere psychical existents) are
unreal abstractions, which we have done our best to
discredit.1 ' For surely,' it will be said, ' my mind is
at any rate not yours, and at any rate it occurs in time
with its own individual and distinctive process. A
1 Cf. above, pp. 24, 25.

60 THE NATUKE OF TEUTH

mind in general is a fiction as unreasonable as a psy
chical state which is not particularized in time, and
not confined to an individual subject. And how
would it help you, even if we admitted this universal
mind, which is neither mine nor yours, whose processes
and states are not existent and particular, but timeless
and universal ? It would be a mind whose thoughts
might be " true ", but its thoughts would have no
relation to our thoughts, and their " truth " would be
in a world apart from human judgement and infer
ence. Moreover, though you disclaim the title of
Subjective Idealists, you call yourselves Idealists ;
and Idealism is and must be Subjective Idealism.
Out of its own mouth it stands condemned. For,
though it may make play with a distinction between
two factors within experience — that which is expe
rienced and the experiencing thereof — it is ultimately
driven to recognize mind and nothing but mind every
where. In the end it is forced to maintain that what
ever is is "spirit" or "spiritual", "mind" or "men
tal", a "self" or "psychical states and processes" of
a "self". Knowledge is for it that process in which
mind comes to recognition of itself ; that consumma
tion in which " spirit greets spirit ", or in which the
objectivity and externality in the subject-matter vanish
into the "transparent subjectivity" of pure self-con
sciousness, i.e. of " thought thinking thought ". Eeal-
ity, for all forms of Idealism, is of this " unsubstan
tial stuff". It is "ideas", "thoughts", "spiritual"
or "psychical" processes ; and these and their like are
in, or of, individual minds. If, then, you face the
logical consequences of your idealistic position, the
Universe will be for you the complex of the psychical
processes within a finite spirit, viz. yourself. Such
a complex, invested perhaps with the kind of inner
consistency which attaches to a coherent dream, is the

INDEPENDENT ENTITIES 61

utmost that you are logically entitled to accept as
Keal. For there is no logical warrant for the orna
mental additions which some Idealists have made to
their Solipsism. They have no right to recognize
other finite spirits or a divine and infinite spirit,
except as psychical states of their own, as part and
parcel of their dream/

Subjective Idealism has rightly fallen into discredit.
It will not stand as a theory of Eeality ; and it affords
no foundation for a sane theory of knowledge or of
conduct. It fails when it takes the consistent form of
Solipsism ; and it fails equally when it assumes the
half-hearted form of a spiritual pluralism. Neither I
myself and my psychical states, nor an assemblage of
finite selves each wrapped up in Ins own ideas, can
constitute the ultimate reality. And the failure of
Subjective Idealism is in no way lessened by the
introduction of an infinite mind and its psychical
states besides the finite self or selves. It is indeed ' a
short way with Idealists ' to identify them with the
advocates of this type of theory : and if the identi
fication were established, Idealism would be finally
refuted.1 But the point at issue is whether this

1 Cf. G. E. Moore, 'The Kefutation of Idealism/ Mind, N.S.,
No. 48, pp. 433-53. The reader of Mr. Moore's article will notice
that he has made his task easy for himself by his formulation of
the purport of Idealism. Cf. e.g. p. 433 : l Modern Idealism, if it
asserts any general conclusion about the universe at all, asserts
that it is spiritual. . . Chairs and tables and mountains seem to be
very different from us ; but, when the whole universe is declared
to be spiritual, it is certainly meant to assert that they are far
more like us than we think. The idealist means to assert that
they are in some sense neither lifeless nor unconscious, as they cer
tainly seem to be ; and I do not think his language is so grossly
deceptive, but that we may assume him to believe that they really
are very different indeed from what they seem.' On p. 434 * stars '
and ' planets ', ' cups ' and ' saucers ', take the place of * chairs and
tables and mountains ' as examples of things which the Idealist is
supposed to regard as being ' really very different indeed from
what they seem'. When Spinoza maintained that ' omnia, quamvis

62 THE NATURE OF TRUTH

identification is sound or not : and I am contending
that it is not. The Subjective Idealist maintains that
he knows directly only his own ideas or psychical
states, is aware only of affections of his psychical
subjectivity. He is confined to states and processes of
his own self-contained and exclusive psychical being.
Anything else — if there be anything else — is for him, as
he knows it, a state or process of himself. And if, by
a precarious inference or by an illogical postulate, he
admits the being of other finite subjects and of an
infinite subject or God, these are all external to one
another and to him, and self-contained and exclusive
like himself. But throughout I have been insisting
that self-contained and exclusive entities of this kind
are fictions. I have tried to show that the Universe
is not a whole of independent and reciprocally-exclusive
parts, and that a Universal is not another entity along
side of its particulars. It is unwarrantable, therefore,
to accuse me of postulating a i universal mind which
is neither mine nor yours ', or a * mind in general ', or
a ' divine mind ' which is external to the finite minds.
Such a postulate is utterly inconsistent with all that
we have been maintaining ; and certainly it would in
no way support our theory. And if, in the consum-

diversis gradibus, animata tamen sunt ', some critics were naive
enough to protest that a stone or a lamp or a chair surely had no
soul. Similarly, Mr. Moore appears to suppose that the Idealists,
who hold that the universe is in its ultimate reality l spiritual ',
understand by the universe in its ultimate reality the assemblage of
what the unreflecting perceptive consciousness takes as ' things '.
Chairs, tables, mountains, stars, planets, cups and saucers, Mr.
Moore apparently assumes, are as such ultimately real. Ordinary
people attach certain properties to them ; and then the Idealist,
with his strange love of paradox, attaches quite other properties
to them. They — the chairs and tables and saucers, &c. — remain
these individual things ; but have now ' in some sense ' acquired
life and consciousness. Even if Mr. Moore really had reduced all
Idealism to Subjective Idealism, his * refutation ' is far from con
vincing ; but it will be time enough for Idealists to meet Mr.
Moore's * refutation ' when the reduction has been made.

INDEPENDENT ENTITIES 63

mation of knowledge, l spirit greets spirit ', or ' mind
recognizes itself', or self-consciousness has become
4 the transparent unity of thought with thought for
its object', has any Idealist ever suggested that this
consummation is embodied e. g. in my apprehension of
this green leaf here and now, taken strictly and solely as
this my particular experience^ Or has any Idealist
acquiesced in the interpretation which identifies
' spirit ', l mind ', i consciousness ' — the i spiritual ', the
1 mental ' — with purely particular, self-contained, ex
clusive existents capable of external (and no other)
relations to one another?

CHAPTER III

TKUTH AS COHERENCE

(1) THE COHERENCE-NOTION OF TRUTH

§21. OUR inquiry into the nature of truth has not
so far been rewarded with conspicuous success. We
have examined two types of theory, and both have
crumbled away before our criticism. The essential
nature of truth does not lie in the correspondence
of knowledge with reality. Truth is not adequately
conceived as the ideal representation of fact, or as
the image which faithfully reflects an original. And,
again, truth is not a quality, an immediate charac
teristic flavour, of independent entities which are what
they are in and for themselves without relation to
mind.

Of these negative results we have convinced our
selves, even if we have failed to convince the reader.
Incidentally, moreover, our discussion has led us to
reject yet another view. No special virtue attaches
to immediate apprehension : and the truth is not
essentially and in its nature l immediate ', even though
it may sometimes be manifested in an intuitive or
immediate form. What is true, is true not because
but in spite of the immediacy of the experience in
which it is sometimes revealed.

Our results are thus in appearance purely negative.
We seem to have destroyed everything, even the
materials for a possible reconstruction. But a more
careful consideration will show that we have in reality
made some progress towards a more adequate concep
tion of truth. For our criticism was developed under
the control of a positive notion of truth. How other-

THE COHEKENCE-NOTION OF TEUTH 65

wise, indeed, could our criticism convince us that itself
was true ? And this positive notion, from which our
criticism drew its destructive power, came to the
surface in the course of our discussion. Its main
features, its characteristic if somewhat shadowy out
line, emerged as that other view of truth on which we
found ourselves driven back : the view of truth as
* systematic coherence'.1 It may be difficult, but it
is surely not impossible, to develop these fragmentary
indications into a full and definite exposition of the
coherence-notion of truth.

If we succeed in formulating this theory, we must
then examine it as we have examined the others ;
but we may approach our task with an assurance
which should give us comfort. For the coherence-
theory, even though it may fail to run the gauntlet of
all criticism, at least goes deeper than the theories we
have rejected. It is not simply another theory on the
same level, side by side with them. It is the source
from which they draw what speculative value they
possess. So far as their attractions are not merely
meretricious, they attract by masquerading in its
finery. It has emerged in our discussion — so far as
it has emerged — as the substantial basis underlying
their perverted and perverse expressions. Hence we
may rest confidently in our critical rejection of them.
We have tested them and found them wanting ; and
this verdict we need never recall. Doubtless our
i criticism of them implied the coherence-notion of
truth ; and doubtless that notion may prove neither
ultimate nor complete. Yet most certainly it is more
complete and more nearly ultimate than the rejected
theories ; and if we are obliged in the end to reject it,
our rejection will not reinstate the earlier views, but
only confirm our condemnation of them.

1 Cf. above, pp. 1C, 17, 22, 23, 28, 42 note, 56-8.

JOACHIM

66 THE NATUKE OF TEUTH

§22. We may start with the following as a
provisional and rough formulation of the coherence-
notion. * Anything is true which can be conceived.
It is true because, and in so far as, it can be con
ceived. Conceivability is the essential nature of
truth'. And we may proceed at once to remove
a possible misunderstanding of the term ' conceive '.
We do not mean by ' conceive ' to form a mental
picture ; and we shall not be dismayed when we
hear that the Antipodes were once ' inconceivable ',
or that a Centaur can be ' conceived '. For it may be
difficult — or even, if you like, impossible — to i image '
people walking head downwards ; and to i picture '
a horse with the head and shoulders of a man may
be as easy as you please. All this is quite irrelevant,
and does not touch our position. To ' conceive '
means for us to think out clearly and logically, to hold
many elements together in a connexion necessitated
by their several contents. And to be l conceivable '
means to be a * significant whole ', or a whole possessed
of meaning for thought. A 'significant whole' is
such that all its constituent elements reciprocally
involve one another, or reciprocally determine one
another's being as contributory features in a single
concrete meaning. The elements thus cohering con
stitute a whole which may be said to control the
reciprocal adjustment of its elements, as an end
controls its constituent means. And in this sense
a Centaur is ' inconceivable ', whilst the Antipodes
are clearly 'conceivable'. For the elements con
stitutive of the Centaur refuse to enter into reciprocal
adjustment. They collide amongst themselves, or
they clash with some of the constitutive elements in
that wider sphere of experience, that larger significant
whole, in which the Centaur must strive for a place.
The horse-man might pass externally as a convenient

THE COHEKENCE-NOTION OF TEUTH 67

shape for rapid movement ; but how about his internal
economy, the structure, adjustment and functioning of
his inner organs ? If he is to be ' actual ', the animal
kingdom is his natural home. But if we persisted in
our attempt to locate the creature there, we should
inevitably bring confusion and contradiction into that
sphere of significant being — so far at least as it is
manifest to us in our anatomical and physiological
knowledge. And, on the other hand, the being of
the Antipodes is a necessary interconnected piece in
that puzzle of which our astronomical science is the
coherent exposition. The Antipodes are i conceivable '
in the sense that they are forced upon any thinker for
whom the earth and the solar system are to possess
significance ; i. e. the Antipodes are a necessary con
stituent of a significant whole, as that whole must be
conceived.1
$23. Thus ^conceivability' means for us systematic

1 I have not referred to the negative formulation, which finds
the criterion of a necessary truth in the inconceivability of its
opposite. Is it true e.g. that the diagonal of a square is incom
mensurate with its side ? Try whether its commensurability is
conceivable. If it be inconceivable, the original thesis is estab
lished as a ' npcessary ' truth. Such a view was attributed to
Whewell by Mill (Logic, II, ch. v, § 6), in his controversy as to the
ground of our belief in the mathematical axioms. But the dis
tinction between 'necessary' and 'contingent' truths is not one
which I should be prepared to accept ; and, even apart from that,
the negative formulation is unsuitable for our present purpose. A
criterion of truth — i.e. something other than the truth itself, by
which we are to recognize the truth — is not what we require. We
want to know what truth in its nature is, not by what character
istics in its opposing falsehood we may infer its presence. Yet it
is only the latter purpose which is facilitated by the roundabout
method through the inconceivability of the opposite. The opposite
is sometimes more accessible to our experiments: it is easier to
try (and to fail) to conceive the false, than to try with success
to conceive the true. But this is a mere psychological fact — an
accident of our convenience — and does not enter into the consti
tution of truth as an essential element of its nature. The baffled
attempt, in other words, is at best a causa cognoscendi of the
truth, not its caw. a essendi.

E 2

68 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

coherence, and is the determining characteristic of
a 'significant whole'. The systematic coherence of
such a whole is expressed most adequately and explicitly
in the system of reasoned knowledge which we call
a science or a branch of philosophy.1 Any element
of such a whole shares in this characteristic to a greater
or less degree — i. a is more or less ' conceivable ' — in
proportion as the whole, with its determinate inner
articulation, shines more or less clearly through that
element ; or in proportion as the element, in manifest
ing itself, manifests also with more or less clearness
and fullness the remaining elements in their reciprocal
adjustment.

It is obvious that this rough sketch suggests many
difficult problems. Truth, we have said, is in its
essence conceivability or systematic coherence ; and
now we seem to have severed ' the conceivable ' from
its expression, the ' significant whole ' from the forms
in which its significance is revealed. The truth, there
fore, would apparently fall on the side of the Eeal ;
and would stand over against science or reasoned
knowledge, faith, emotion, volition, &c., as the various
subjective modes in which it obtains actuality and

1 I am not denying that a l significant whole ' may find expression
in other forms and at other levels than that of discursive thinking.
The moral ideal e.g. is a significant whole, which finds expression
in the ordered life of a people, in their maintenance of the laws
and institutions, in their reasonable but unreflective habitual
conduct, in their conscience, sense of duty and justice, love of
country, love of family and friends, &c., &c. But this significant
whole in its character as truth is most adequately expressed at the
level of reflective thinking, and in the form of the science or
philosophy of conduct ; for such a science is the explicit analysis
and the reasoned reconstruction of the inner organization (the
systematic coherence) of the moral ideal. Similarly, aesthetic and
religious ideals are significant wholes ; and their systematic coher
ence or truth is most adequately revealed in the reflective form of
a philosophy of art or of religion. Yet they also use the emotion of
the artist and art-lover, or the faith of the devoi.t but unthinking
worshipper, as more immediate vehicles of their actuality.

THE COHERENCE-NOTION OF TRUTH 69

recognition. But this severance of the experienced
Real from the experiencing of it, is the very mistake
against which the main discussions of our second
chapter were directed ; whilst, if truth be thus located
in a sphere of being apart from mind, it is difficult
to see how science can in any sense be * true '. We
spoke of science as an explicit analysis and reasoned
reconstruction of the systematic coherence of a signifi
cant whole ; but this sounds uncommonly like a re
version to the correspondence-notion. Science would
be l true ', so far as its system of demonstrations re
constructs — i. e. repeats or corresponds to — the systematic
coherence which is the truth as a character of the Real.

Moreover, we have admitted degrees of conceivability,
and therefore also degrees of truth. But we have not
explained, and perhaps could not explain, the ideal of
perfect conceivability and perfect truth by reference
to which these degrees are to be estimated.

Before I turn to the consideration of these problems,
let me endeavour to throw further light on the theory
just sketched, by contrasting it with two very different
views to which it bears some superficial resemblance.
The time and labour occupied in this comparison will
not be wasted ; for it will enable us to develop a more
adequate formulation of the coherence-notion, and we
shall approach the problems to be solved with a more
just appreciation of their precise difficulty.

§ 24. (i) When Descartes laid it down as a principle
for the seeker after truth 'to affirm nothing as true
except that which he could clearly and distinctly
perceive', he was in reality presupposing a very definite
theory of knowledge and a correspondingly determinate
metaphysics \ If we wish to pass a true judgement,

1 Descartes' full meaning is best seen by comparing his Hcgulae
ad directionem ingenii with the corresponding passages in the
Discours de la Methode, the Meditationes, and the Principia Philoso-

70 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

we must affirm or deny only that content which we
clearly and distinctly apprehend. Inner affirmation,
or denial, which is the characteristic of judgement,
is an act in which we exhibit our free choice or
will. 1 But this act is exercised upon a material in the
acceptance of which we are passive. The intellect —
a passive recipient — apprehends a content, which the
will — an active faculty — may affirm or deny. And
if this affirmation is to constitute a true judgement,
the content affirmed must force itself upon our
intellect as a self-evident datum, which we immediately
recognize as indubitable. Thus the immediate appre
hension of indubitable truth^ an_^ intuition ', is the
necessary pre-condition of truth of judgement.2 The
content of such an i intuition ', viz. that which we
apprehend intuitively as self-evident, is a * simple
idea ', or rather (as Descartes sometimes 3 more clearly
expresses it) a ' simple proposition \ Its 'simplicity '
does not exclude inner distinction ; for it is the imme-

phiae7 On the whole subject cf. Adamson, The Development of
Modern Philosophy, Vol. I, ch. i, and Broder Christiansen, Das
Urteil bei Descartes.

1 In certain cases we exhibit our freedom by neither affirming
nor denying, but by suspending our will. But this is a detail of
the theory which we can here disregard. — The affirmation (or
negation) involved in judgement is internal', cf. e.g. Descartes'
answer to Hobbes: 'Per se notum est . . . aliud esse videre hominem
currentem, quam sibi ipsi affirmare se ilium videre, quod fit sine
voce.' (Obi. et Resp. tertiae, answer to objection vi).

2 This double and ambiguous use of * truth ' — truth of judgement
and truth of apprehension — exposes Descartes' theory of know
ledge to serious criticism. But I cannot enter into the matter
here. Neither is this the place to discuss the ambiguity in
Descartes' statements concerning the ' Intellect ' and ' Ideas '. At
times ' ideas ' are simply modes, phases, determinate states of the
intellect ; but at other times the intellect is said to * attend to '
ideas, which it i finds' in itself. Cf. and contrast Notae in progr.
quadd. (pp. 158 and 163 in the edition of 1692), Letter of 1644
(Adam & Tannery, IV, 113) and Regulae i, xii, Medit. vi. On
the whole subject, cf. Norman Smith, Studies in the Cartesian
Philosophy, p. 52, pp. 90 if.

3 Particularly in the Regulae ; cf. e.g. Eeg. iii, xi, xii.

THE COHEBENCE-NOTION OF TEUTH 71

diate, but necessary, cohesion of Jam_e]£ment3~or two
c7nrstituenif_ideas. In other words, the self-evident
datum, which Descartes calls a i simple idea* or a
' simple proposition ', is a hypothetical judgement so
formulated that the antecedent immediately necessi
tates the consequent, though the consequent need not
reciprocally involve the antecedent.1

7 The elements in the content of an l intuition ' cohere
by the immediate necessity which binds consequent
to antecedent in a hypothetical judgement of the kind
explained. But the content as a whole is grasped
intuitively, or immediately, as an indubitable self-
evident datum. Such sejf-evident indubitable truths
_— — — — ^~^

constitute the foundation on which the structure of
scientific and philosophical knowledge is built. They
are the principles, from which the whole system of
demonstrated and demonstrable truth must be derived.2

1 Cf. Descartes' own instances : ' cogito ergo sum ', i.e. ' if
self-consciousness, then existence', but not necessarily also 'if
existence, then self-consciousness'. So '2 + 2=4', i.e. 'if 2 be
added to 2, there must be 4'; but there may be 4 without this
mode of addition, as is evident from '3 + 1 = 4', which Descartes
quotes as another instance of ' Intuition '. Cf. Regulae, iii ; and, on
the whole subject, see Adamson, 1. c. p. 10, note 3 ; and Christian
sen, 1. c. pp. 28 if.

a The mediate truths are reached from the immediate self-
evidents by a process which Descartes calls ' deduction '. The
logical character of this process is not syllogistic (cf. e.g.
Eegulae, x). It is a pure illation of the mind, which, in the
simplest cases, is hardly distinguishable from the immediate
intuition of a necessary nexus within a content. Thus e.g. we
intuite that 2 + 2 = 4, and again that 3 + 1 = 4; we deduce that
3 + 1 = 2 + 2. But the latter (mediate) truth, when the movement
of the mind is over, is itself grasped immediately, i.e. becomes an
'intuition' (cf. e.g. Regulae, iii, xi). In such cases, the term
' deduction ' marks the movement of illation in distinction from
the concentrated grasp of the articulated content in which that
movement culminates and rests. In more complex cases, the
inference presupposes an ordered grouping of the many self-
evidents, from which the grasp of the mediate truth is ultimately
to emerge. To this preparatory grouping Descartes gives the
name of induction or enumeration ; and he occasionally extends

72 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

And this system is, so to say, a network of chains of
propositions. The links in each chain form an unin
terrupted sequence from its first link. They follow
with unbroken logical coherence from a self-evident
datum, a i simple proposition ' apprehended intuitively.
Each derivative link is grasped by the intellect as the
necessary consequent of a link or links intuited as
indubitable truths, and as thus grasped itself is manifest
as an indubitable truth.

Thus, the ideal of knowledge for Descartes is a
coherent system of truths, where each truth is appre
hended in its logical position : the immediate as the
basis, and the mediate truths in their necessary de
pendence on the immediate. Each truth in this ideal
system is a cohesion of different elements united by
a logical nexus; and every truth is true^er se absolutely
and unalterably.

But the theory which I am trying to expound is
committed, for good or for evil, to a radically different
view of the systematization of knowledge. The image
of a chain, admirably suited to illustrate the theory
of Descartes, is a sheer distortion of the conception of
4 coherence ' or ' conceivability ', which, on my view,
characterizes truth. The ideal of knowledge for me
is a system, not of truths, but of truth. l Coherence '
cannot be attached to propositions from the outside :

these titles to the inference as a whole (cf. Regulae, vii, xi, xii).
But even here the logical character of the inference remains
the same. The 'deduction', 'induction/ or 'enumeration', is
always the illative movement from a content or contents intuitively
apprehended to another content which follows by direct logical
necessity from the first. And it is a mere accident, due e.g. to the
limitations of our memory, that the movement does not always
issue in an ' intuition '. I cannot enter into further details here,
though I am aware that inductio (or enumeratio) is usually inter
preted as a distinct method of proof, differing in logical character
from deductio. But I believe that a careful study of the Regulae
will convince the reader that my interpretation is essentially
correct, however paradoxical it may appear.

THE COHERENCE-NOTION OF TEUTH 73

it is not^property which they can acquire by colliga
tion, whilst retaining unaltered the truth they possessed
in isolation. And whereas for Descartes ideally certain
knowledge (indubitable truth) is typified in the intui
tive grasp of the immediately cohering elements of
a * simple proposition', such a content is for me so
remote from the ideal as hardly to deserve the name
of ' truth' at all. For it is the smallest and most
abstracted fragment of knowledge, a mere mutilated
shred torn from the living whole in which alone it
possessed its significance. The typical embodiments
of the ideal must be sought, not in such isolated intui
tions, but rather in the organized whole of a science :
for that possesses at least relative self-dependence, and
its significance is at least relatively immanent and self-
contained.

§ 25. (ii) The second view with which I propose to
contrast the coherence-theory may be regarded as
a corollary of the first.1 For, if there are certain
judgements indubitably true, then these are the
materials of knowledge. And, in the progress of
thought, a form is imposed upon these materials which
arranges without altering them. Truth is linked to
truth until the arrangement constitutes that network
of chains of truths which is the system of ideally
complete knowledge. The form under which the
infinitely various materials are ordered, is the univer
sal form of all thinking. It is the characteristic grey
of formal consistency, which any and every thinking
monotonously paints over all its materials to stamp
them as its own. This arrangement under the form
of thinking cannot of itself guarantee the truth of the
result. For false materials, as well as true, may be
painted with the royal colour. But the result cannot

1 I do not suggest that the two views were historically so
related.

74 THE NATUEE OF TKUTH

be true without this arrangement, which is thus a sine
qua non or a ' negative condition ' of truth. We may
christen the observance of this condition \ validity ' ;
and we may then draw the conclusion that the com
pletely true must also be valid, though the valid may
be false. Or if we prefer the term ' consistency ' we
shall point out that consistent lying and consistent
error are occasionally achieved, and that a man may
be a consistent scoundrel ; but that the truth requires
for its apprehension and utterance the same con
sistency of thought and purpose, which must also be
expressed in the actions of the morally good man.
The consistent, in short, need be neither true nor
good ; but the good and the true must be consistent.

This distinction between the universal form and the
particular materials of thought has, in various modifica
tions, played a great part in the history of philosophy.
I am here concerned with it in its barest and most
extreme shape, as the fundamental assumption of the
traditional * formal ' logic. Pressed beyond the limits
of legitimate provisional abstraction until it has be
come a mere caricature, the antithesis between form
and matter has in that ' science ' 1 been worked out
through the whole domain and through all the functions
of thinking. Judgement e. g. is that function of
thought whereby two conceptions are combined ; and
whatever the materials, the form of combination ex
hibits a character of its own, which is to be studied
apart. Hence those classifications of ' formal ' logic
which we have all of us learnt, and learnt to unlearn
again : those rigid groupings of Judgements as Univer
sal, Individual, Particular ; as Negative, Affirmative,
Infinite ; as Categorical, Hypothetical, Necessary, &c.,
&c. So, Syllogism is the function of thought whereby

1 Or ' art ' : it does not matter which title we give to what is
neither one nor the other.

THE COHERENCE-NOTION OF TRUTH 75

two judgements are combined to generate a third ; and
* formal ' logic gives you the rules of l valid ' combina
tion irrespective of what is combined, and impotent
therefore to determine the truth of the result.

Formal logic, in this sense of the term, might be
called ' the analysis of low-grade thinking ' l ; but all
thinking, even at its lowest, is a living process, which
the mechanical methods of such an analysis are too
crude to grasp. Yet all thinking — the most compli
cated and profound, as well as the most shallow and
rudimentary — exhibits a certain unity of character.
And the formal logician has followed a sound instinct
in emphasizing the necessity of analysing and grasping
this unity, if thinking is to understand itself. But he
has erred in looking for the unity as an abstract
common feature, to be found in the actual processes
of thinking by stripping them of their concrete differ
ences. And it is the same error which has led him to
conceive thinking as a dead and finished product in
stead of a living and moving process. In_the_end and
in principle his error is the failure to conceive a uni
versal except as one element along with others in the
particular : a failure which is tantamount to the nega
tion^ all universals. Or it is the failure to conceive
a whole except as the sum of its parts : a failure which
is the denial of unity and individual character to that
which develops and lives. Hence formal logic assumes
that the essential nature of thought is to be found
in an abstractly self-identical form ; in a tautologous
self-consistency, where the l self ' has no diversity of
content in which a genuine consistency could be
manifested, or where diversity of content is cast aside
as mere irrelevant material. But the essential nature
of thought is a concrete unity, a living individuality.
Thought is a form, which moves and expands, and

1 Cf. e.g. Bosanquet, Knowledge and Reality, 2nd issue, p. 193.

76 THE JSTATUKE OF TEUTH

exhibits its consistent character precisely in those
ordered articulations of its structure which formal
logic impotently dismisses as mere materials.

The i systematic coherence ', therefore, in which we
are looking for the nature of truth, must not be
confused with the i consistency ' of formal logic. A
piece of thinking might be free from self-contradiction,
might be * consistent ' and l valid ' as the formal logician
understands those terms, and yet it might fail to
exhibit that systematic coherence which is truth.

§ 26. We may now proceed to formulate the
coherence-theory afresh in the following terms. Truth
in its essential nature is that systematic coherence
which is the character of a significant whole. A
1 significant whole ' is an organized individual experi
ence, self-fulfilling and self-fulfilled. Its organization
is the process of its self-fulfilment, and the concrete
manifestation of its individuality. But this process
is no mere surface-play between static parts within
the whole: nor is the individuality of the whole,
except in the movement which is its manifestation.
The whole is not, if l is ' implies that its nature is a
finished product prior or posterior to the process, or
in any sense apart from it. And the whole has no
parts, if 'to have parts' means to consist of fixed
and determinate constituents, from and to which the
actions and interactions of its organic life proceed,
much as a train may travel backwards and forwards
between the terminal stations. Its i parts ' are through
and through in the process and constituted by it.
They are ' moments' in the self-fulfilling process
which is the individuality of the whole. And the
individuality of the whole is both the pre-supposition
of the distinctive being of its l moments ' or parts and
the resultant which emerges as their co-operation, or
which they make and continuously sustain.

THE COHERENCE-NOTION OF TEUTH 77

It is this process of self-fulfilment which is truth,
and it is this which the theory means by t systematic
coherence'. The process is not a movement playing
between static elements, but the very substance of
the moving elements. And the coherence is no
abstract form imposed upon the surface of materials,
which retain in their depths a nature untouched by
the imposition. The coherence — if we call it a
4 form' — is a form which through and through inter
penetrates its materials ; and they — if we call them
i materials' — are materials, which retain no inner
privacy for themselves in independence of the form.
They hold their distinctive being in and through, and
not in sheer defiance of, their identical form ; and its
identity is the concrete sameness of different materials.
The materials are only as moments in the process
which is the continuous emergence of the coherence.
And the form is only as the sustained process of self-
fulfilment, wherein just these materials reveal them
selves as constitutive moments of the coherence.

In the above formulation I have endeavoured to
express the coherence-notion so as to emphasize the
concreteness of the coherence which is truth, as against
the view which found truth in formal consistency l ;
and I have insisted upon the conception of truth as
a living and moving whole, as against the Cartesian
view of fixed truths on which the structure of
knowledge is built.2 But the result at present is a
mere vague sketch, which cannot pretend to be
satisfactory. Even the well-disposed reader will
regard it as the description of a mystical ideal with
no obvious application to the actual problems of
human knowledge ; whilst the hostile critic will view
it as a dishonest evasion of the difficulties, as mere
words in place of a solid discussion. I shall accordingly

Cf- ab°ve, § 25. c • Cf. above, § 24.

78 THE NATUKE OF TEUTH

attempt to work out my sketch in detail, so as to
show the precise bearing of this conception of truth
on the truth in human judgement and inference, and
so as to defend it against the charge of mysticism or
evasion of the difficulties.

-*• §27. If we are to develop our vague sketch into
a definite theory, we must make it clear what truth
we are professing to describe. Was our sketch
intended as an exposition of truth as it is for
human knowledge? or were we describing an ideal
experience, which no finite mind can ever actually
enjoy ?

This manner of formulating the question seems to
challenge a choice between two unambiguous alter
natives, and thus to put a clear issue before us.
But in reality it involves certain assumptions which
are open to debate, and which — as I think, and hope
to show — are false.1 For it is assumed that finite
experience is sundered by a gulf from ideal experience.
It is implied that an ideal experience is as such
debarred from actuality, and it is suggested that know
ledge which is severed from ideal experience can yet
be true. But, whilst refusing to commit myself to
these implications, I should reply that my sketch
was intended to describe the nature of truth as an
ideal, as the character of an ideally complete experience.
Truth, we said, was the systematic coherence which
characterized a significant whole. And we proceeded
to identify a significant whole with ' an organized
individual experience, self-fulfilling and self-fulfilled '.
Now there can be one and only one such experience :
or only one significant whole, the significance of which
is self-contained in the sense required. For it is
absolute self-fulfilment, absolutely self-contained signifi
cance, that is postulated ; and nothing short of absolute
1 Cf. below, pp. 82, 83.

THE COHERENCE-NOTION OF TRUTH 79

individuality — nothing short of the completely whole
experience — can satisfy this postulate. And human
knowledge — not merely my knowledge or yours, but
the best and fullest knowledge in the world at any
stageToFits development — is clearly not a significant
whole in this ideally complete sense. Hence the
truth, which our sketch described, is— from the point
of view of the human intelligence — an Ideal, and an
Ideal which can never as such, or in its completeness,
be actual as human experience.

But it will be contended that such an Ideal cannot
be expressed in terms of human thought, and is strictly
inconceivable. ' All attempts to conceive your Ideal ',
we shall be told, ' are foredoomed to failure. For we
cannotjonceive, except under categories whose meaning
is moulded and ^restricted by^ the limitations j)fjthat
finite ^xpgrience_ in which alone they have jmy
legitimate application. We employ categories with
a determinate meaning in their application to the
incomplete experience, which is actually ours : but
their meaning is determinate, only in so far as it is
relative to the area in which the restricting conditions
hold. Yet the conception of your Ideal requires the
absolute and unrestricted use of these categories.
But, if they are used absolutely, we can conceive
nothing determinate under them : we are playing
with empty words. Whilst, if they are used under
the restrictions which condition their application
in finite experience, they are inadequate to express
the Ideal, and distort instead of describing its nature.
Thus you made use e. g. of the notions of Life,
Organism, Self-fulfilling Process. These notions have
a determinate meaning in their application to the
objects of our limited experience ; but their meaning
is itself restricted in that application. The life of
any object of our experience is far from being a

80 THE NATUKE OF TEUTH

self-sustaining process, a closed circle of functions
revolving free from all external conditions. It is
limited in every way, dependent in origin, extent,
intensity and duration, and conditioned throughout
by what is other and perhaps hostile. No object of
our experience is Life ; and the Life, which some of
them manifest, is conditioned by the sources from
which it was derived, and by the bodily organs and
the environment in and through which it is main
tained. Yet the "living whole", which is your
Ideal, is to be limited in no way, and in no way
dependent upon anything other than itself. Or did
you intend to suggest that it came to be, and grew,
and would pass away; that it maintained itself in
this its bodily vehicle over against an environment
not itself? Nor again can the notion of Organism
find absolute expression in any of the objects of our
experience. No whole is through and through organic,
an organism pure and simple. We never find a whole
whose parts are what they are as reciprocally ends
and means to one another, and such that the plan
of coherence (which is the whole) determines absolutely
the nature and the being of the parts which in turn
constitute it. The idea of such a purely organic whole
remains an empty conception, a shadowy notion with
no positive significance. To describe your ideal as an
" organized experience ", if " organized " is used in this
absolute sense, in no way elucidates your meaning.
And Self-fulfilment, where it applies in our experience,
expresses a process which starts with given materials
and a given and limited power of working upon them.
At best, the process culminates in a limited achieve
ment ; and, after a shorter or a longer period of
effort and relative success, the Self and its Fulfilment
vanish together. Yet you used all these notions to
describe your Ideal, with an utter disregard of the

THE COHEEENCE-NOTION OF TEUTH 81

restrictions under which alone they convey a deter
minate meaning. And the result was meaningless
phrases — words such as "a process, whose moments
sustain the whole, and themselves are made and
constituted by the process", or "a movement, which
is the very substance of the moving elements." :

§28. Now it may be admitted that conceptions
'"> derived from partial wholes cannot adequately express
I the whole ; and that what we experience is in a sense
always a partial whole, or the whole from a finite and
partial point of view. We cannot experience the
whole completely and adequately, just in so far as
we are not ourselves complete. But because^ we are
not^ complete, it does not follow that we are divorced
from the complete and in sheer opposition to it. We
are not absolutely real, but neither are we utterly
unreal. And because our apprehension is restricted,
and in part confused, it does not follow that it is
utterly false and an entire distortion of the nature of
things. The categories which we have to employ
are no doubt inadequate to express the complete
reality ; but this is no reason for not employing them
at all, or for employing them all alike and indifferently.
For they all to some extent express the whole ; and
there are degrees in the relative adequacy of the ex
pression. The categories of Life, Organism, and Self-
fulfilment express in our experience wholes of a more
concrete, more developed and relatively more self-
contained individuality than e. g. the categories under
which we conceive a whole of aggregation, or a whole
constituted by the limiting outline of its continent
environment, or again a whole whose inner being is
a static adjustment of parts or a surface-play of move
ments between fixed constituent elements. And for
this reason I employed these categories as relatively
more adequate notions under which to conceive the

82 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

Ideal. Still more adequate notions might perhaps
have been found within our finite experience. For
it would seem that the significant whole, which is
truth, can in the end be most adequately described
only in terms of the categories of self-conscious
thought. But it is worth while to describe it in
terms of the categories of Life, Organism, and Self-
fulfilling Process as against those lower grades of
theory which we have been criticizing — theories
which conceive it under the notions of a static whole,
like a * building ' ; or of an aggregation of units, like
a l sum of truths ' ; or of a static adjustment of two
wholes of fixed elements, like a ' correspondence '
between original and copy.

But the real way to meet the charge that the Ideal
is inconceivable is to challenge the ' common-sense '
attitude of the critic. The Ideal, he is in effect main
taining, is not in its completeness here and now, and
therefore is not actual : it cannot be adequately ex
pressed in terms of finite experience, and therefore is
inconceivable. And this criticism betrays an amazing
acquiescence in the first hasty assumptions of the
unreflecting consciousness. For the critic assumes
that finite experience is solid and fully real and clearly
conceivable, an unshaken datum here and now ; and
that we must accept it without question as, so to say,
a pier from which to throw a bridge across to the
cloudland Ideal. But we have been demanding all
along an entire reversal of this attitude, In our view
it is the Ideal which is solid and substantial and fully
actual. The finite experiences are rooted in the Ideal.
They share its actuality, and draw from it whatever
being and conceivability they possess. It is a perverse
attitude to condemn the Ideal because the conditions,
under which the finite experiences exhibit their frag
mentary actuality, do not as such restrict its being ; or

THE COHERENCE-NOTION OF TRUTH 83

to deny that it is conceivable, because the conceiva-
bility of such incomplete expressions is too confused
and turbid to apply to it.

That nothing in our partial experience answers
precisely to the demands of the Ideal, cannot show
that the Ideal is an unsubstantial dream, an idle
play of words. The question is whether our partial
experience through and through involves the bein^'
of the ideally-complete experience which we have
postulated. And the way to answer this question is
to examine the implications of our partial experience,
or on the other hand to trace the Ideal in its mani
festations.

§29. But this is precisely where our critics will
join issue with us. For they will fasten on the term
' experience ', and they will demand, i Whose is this
Ideal Experience ? Wliere and when is it actual ?
What is its precise relation to the finite experiences ? '

Now one answer to such questions is, ' Such an
experience is nowhere and at no time, no one possesses
it, and it is related to nothing save itself. For the
questions assume that the Truth is a finished product,
a static consummated whole of experience, which is
somewhere and at some time, exclusive of the finite
experiences as occurrences in time and place, and yet
related to them. But this is not what was meant.
And again they assume that the Truth is the possession
of a finite being. They regard it as the experience of
a ' this-now ', much as I may here and now experience
this toothache. But this again was not meant, though
the misleading associations of the term ' experience '
to some extent justify the misunderstanding.1

1 The term ' experience ' is unsatisfactory, and I should not use
it if I could find a better word. I have endeavoured to guard
against its mischievous associations by coupling it with the
expression * significant whole '. But if ' experience ' tends to

F 2

84 THE NATUKE OF TRUTH

It is not, however, of much value to make a negative
answer of this kind. On the other hand, if we
answered, ' Such an Ideal Experience is everywhere
and at all times ; it is the partial possession of all
finite beings, and they are the incomplete vehicles of
it ', we should merely be repeating more explicitly
what we have already asserted. The mere assertion
is useless ; but nothing short of an entire system of
metaphysics could serve as its justification. The diffi
culty, in short, is that our problem is expanding into
the whole problem of philosophy, and that the dis
cussion threatens to become unmanageable.

But we must make an effort to discuss the i relation'
of the Ideal Truth to the truth of human judgement
and inference without wandering into the field of
metaphysical speculation at large. Perhaps the most
hopeful procedure will be to start from a few typical
instances of ' true ' judgement. If we can show their
4 truth ' expanding in each case into a system of know
ledge, and that again as borrowing what truth it
possesses from the Ideal Experience which is strug
gling for self-fulfilment in it, we shall be able to face
the difficulties we have raised. We shall be able to
face them, for we shall be working with something
definite ; but we must not assume that we shall be
able to solve or remove them.

suggest the experiencing apart from the experience, ' significant
whole ' tends to suggest the experienced apart from the experi
encing. We want a term to express the concrete unity of both,
and I cannot find one. For the, term i God ', if substituted for
' Ideal Experience ', would be seriously misleading in other ways.
And superficial criticism, directed against certain travesties of
' Hegelianism ', has degraded ' the Absolute ' or i the Idea ' — terms
in many respects the best for our purpose — until they have be
come mere conventional symbols for abstractions, which the
critic first invents and then dislikes. If we were to employ these
terms we should merely excite prejudice, without suggesting the
philosophical meaning which they bore in Hegel's system
(cf. Hegel, Encycl, III, pp. 464 ff.).

TEUTH AS COHEEENCE 85

(ii) DEGREES OF TRUTH

§30. We are to take a few typical instances of
'true' judgement with a view to showing that their
' truth ' in the end involves the Ideal which we have
described. It will be convenient to select instances
typical of two main kinds of judgement, which I shall
call respectively the universal judgement of science and
the judgement of fact.1

By a * universal judgement of science ' I mean
a judgement which claims to express a necessary con
nexion of content. The judgement ' 2 4- 2 = 4 ' asserts
that the addition of two units to two units necessarily
involves the sum four, i.e. that 'four' is a necessary
implication of the content which we express as ' the
addition of two and two '. Similarly, the judgement
that the external angles of a triangle are together
equal to four right angles asserts that, if the external
angles of a determinate type of plane figure be con
ceived as summed, the resultant total is necessarily
equivalent to an angle of 360°.

Such judgements would naturally take the form of
a hypothetical judgement affirming a necessary nexus
between its ground and consequent. But in the in
stances just quoted there is still retained some matter
irrelevant to the nexus affirmed, and the nexus is
therefore one-sided only. For though 2+2 = 4, yet
4 may result from other conditions than the addi
tion of 2 and 2 ; and though the external angles of

1 Much of the argument in §§ 30-40 is reproduced (in substance,
if not verbatim) from my article on 'Absolute and Relative
Truth ', which was published in Mind, N.S., No. 53. I take this
opportunity of thanking the editor, Professor G. F. Stout, for
permitting me to reproduce an article which owes its origin to
a discussion initiated by him ; and of thanking Mr. F. H. Bradley,
who made many valuable suggestions when my article was still
unprinted.

86 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

a triangle are together equal to four right angles, yet
it is not precisely qua external angles of a triangle, but
qua external angles of a rectilineal figure, that the
resultant total angle of 360° is necessarily implied.
Hence such one-sided hypotheticals fall short of the
typical universal judgement of science. For scientific
thinking endeavours to eliminate, from the contents
which enter into its judgements, all matter irrelevant
to the necessary nexus which they affirm. It does not
rest content with the formulation of a hypothetical in
which the ground, or the consequent, or both, include
elements other than those which precisely condition
their interconnexion. It moves towards a formula
tion in which the two contents are so purified that
each necessarily involves the other, neither more nor
less.

A ' universal judgement of science ', then, is to be
conceived as a judgement which naturally takes the
form of a reciprocal hypothetical. Ground and conse
quent are precisely commensurate, and the judgement
affirms their reciprocal necessary connexion.1 And
we may think of the following as instances : ; Oxy
gen and hydrogen combined in determinate propor
tions and under determinate conditions necessarily
form water ; and water involves precisely such a
combination of such chemical elements/ ' If, in a
triangle, two of its sides are equal, the two angles
opposite those sides are equal ; and if, in a triangle,
two of its angles are equal, the two sides opposite
those angles are equal.' i 32 = 9, and 9 involves 3 as
its square-root/ ' The development of such and such
a bacillus in an animal organism produces cholera, a
disease with such and such symptoms ; and wherever
there is cholera, a disease with such and such symp-

1 Cf. Aristotle's conception of Ka06\ov predication, Post Anal.
73 b 25 ff., 74 a 37 if. ; and cf. Bosanquet, Logic, Vol. I, pp. 260 if.

DEGEEES OF TEUTH 87

toms, there is such and such a bacillus developing in
an animal organism.'

I have selected judgements of this kind first of all,
because they furnish the strongest support for a view
which would be fatal to the success of our present
endeavour. Every judgement, so it is generally main
tained, is either true or false, and what is true is true
always and absolutely and completely. What is true
is eo ipso l absolutely ' true. ' Eelative truth ' is a con
tradiction in terms, and * absolute ' is an otiose ad
dition to * truth '. There may be truth about the
Eelative ; but the truth about the Eelative is itself
absolute, i. e. true neither more nor less. A so-called
4 partial truth ' is a judgement which contains complete
and absolute truth, but which, as compared with an
other judgement, covers with its truth part only of the
subject-matter of the latter. The same i partial truth',
looked at from the point of view of the~larger judge
ment, and wrongly taken as equivalent to it, is an
1 error '. Hence a ' partial truth ' is the same thing
as a true but indeterminate judgement. The deter
minate judgement is the whole truth about a matter
where the indeterminate judgement affirms only part
of the truth. But the part affirmed is true absolutely
and completely, and remains true to all eternity ; it
is the whole truth about part of the matter. It is
added to, increased, supplemented by the determina
tion : but in the supplementation it is not annulled,
nor even altered. Its truth remains, and remains
qua truth precisely what it was. For indeed truth
is timeless, and cannot alter. And in the ' universal
judgements of science ', more obviously perhaps than
elsewhere, this view seems evident beyond dispute.
They are abstract, no doubt ; but their very abstract-
ness guarantees the precision of their affirmation and
the purity of their truth. The judgement which

88 THE NATURE OF TRUTH

affirms the reciprocal implication of the equality of the
two sides and of the two angles, expresses only a part
of the complete knowledge of the isosceles triangle :
but, as expressing a part of knowledge, it is itself true
wholly and without qualification. The reciprocal im
plication thus affirmed holds unalterably, no matter
what fresh implications may be revealed in the con
tents as knowledge advances. As the science of plane
geometry expands into a system, the l partial truth '
conveyed in such isolated judgements is supplemented
and knit together with more and more truths. But
though the fuller knowledge holds in its grasp far
more of the characteristic properties of the isosceles
triangle and far more of its relations to other forms
of plane figure, the truth of the original judgement
persists as a solid unyielding fragment of the more
perfect knowledge. For otherwise, if its truth does
not persist, in the progress of geometrical science it
presumably becomes false ; and that is a paradox
which no one would seriously maintain.

§31. At first sight, this view of 4he matter seems
unanswerable, and even obvious. What is once true,
it must be agreed, is true always : for truth, since it
holds irrespectively of time, holds indifferently at all
times. And what is not true is false. Now any
science seems full of judgements which are true ; and
their truth, like all truth, must be ' timeless ' or
' eternal', and therefore unalterable. The square of
three is nine, and nine has three as its square-root ;
and this is neither truer, nor less true, now than it was
in the days of Adam. The conditions of cholera,
once precisely formulated, remain for any conceivable
expansion of medical science precisely what that for
mulation affirms them to be. It remains ineffaceably
true that the combination of oxygen and hydrogen
under the determinate conditions specified in the

DEGEEES OF TKUTH 89

judgement implies, and is implied by, its commen
surate consequent, water. And even if the whole
* situation ' does not obtain as full an expression in
these judgements as it will obtain with the advance
ment of knowledge, still a part of it is adequately
expressed in them. So far as they go, such universal
judgements of science are and remain true, though
they may fall short of a full formulation of the con
ditions of cholera, or of a complete chemical analysis
of water.

If we are compelled to accept this contention, the
coherence-notion of truth, as we have conceived it,
cannot be maintained. For we shall have to recognize
that at least the universal judgements of science —
whatever may be the case with other judgements — can
be possessed of truth complete and final, whether they
enter as constituents into any larger whole of know
ledge or not. Truth, whatever it might prove to be,
would certainly not be the* self-fulfilling process which
is the Ideal Experience. For truth would be found
complete and abs'olute in the isolated judgements,
which are mere portions of finite experience. It
would be impossible to show that the truth of ' true '
judgements is essentially the truth of a system of
knowledge ; and it would be equally impossible to
show that the ' truth ' of systems of knowledge ' is
borrowed from the Ideal Experience, which is strug
gling for self-fulfilment in them V We should be forced
to recognize the validity of some such view as that of
Descartes. We should be driven to look for the
essential nature of truth in the character of the con
stituent units, and not in the character of the whole of
knowledge which they constitute. We should return
to the conception of knowledge as a building, in which
the bricks and the stones primarily determine the
1 Above, p. 84.

90 THE NATUKE OF TEUTH

character of the whole. And the coherence, on which
we laid such stress, would be degraded to a mechanical
synthesis of secondary importance, a mere external
arrangement of the materials, which in no way con
stitutes their nature.

§32. And yet the supposed obviousness of this
view fades away before further examination. For
what exactly does it maintain ? That ' the truth ',
i.e. the whole complete truth, is timeless and unalter
able may be admitted as beyond dispute. But it is
an empty admission, if, as we maintain, no judgement
in and by itself is adequate to express the complete
truth. The judgement 32 = 9 is neither more nor
less true now than it was in the days of Adam : but
was it true then, or will it ever be true in that sense
of the term ? The question is precisely whether the
so-called ' truth ' of such judgements, taken with just the
meaning they bear in isolation, is genuine truth, truth
timeless and unalterable. Or, rather, the question is
whether 'they' — the judgements that we speak of as
i true ' — ever were, or are, or could be, isolated in the
manner required. And if it be said that the con
tention is not that any judgement is the whole truth,
but that any true judgement is wholly true, we must
doubt whether this distinction will stand examination,
or whether those who put it forward quite realize to
what they are committed. For how do they conceive
the relation of these wholly-true judgements to the
whole of truth, these little bits of perfect knowledge
to the larger perfect knowledge which they constitute?
And how do they conceive the 4 truth ' either of the
single judgements, or of the system of judgements into
which they enter ?

The theory which we criticized and rejected in our
second chapter offers a definite answer to both these
questions. For it regards truth and falsity as immediate

DEGEEES OF TEUTH 91

qualities of ' propositions ' ; and a * proposition ' is an
entity entirely independent of all other entities and of
everything mental. A true proposition is possessed in
itself of absolute truth as an inalienable quality. And
the totality of true propositions is the truth, i. e. the
absolutely-true whole of all the absolutely-true pro
positions which are its constituent parts. A i judge
ment' is a complex in which a psychical factor is
related to a true or false proposition. The relation,
indeed, is of a special kind : it is t the cognitive
relation', whose peculiarity is such that one of its
terms (viz. the psychical term) ' is nothing but an
awareness of the other term'.1 Still, the psychical
term — the ' belief ', or whatever we call it — is a factor
independent of the non-mental term which is true or
false, although in the ' judgement' the two are related.
Hence a ' true judgement ' is a misnomer. Strictly, it
is the awareness of (or the belief in) a true proposition.
The advance of knowledge is presumably the increas
ing accumulation of beliefs in true propositions. And
ideally complete knowledge would be the totality of
psychical beliefs in the totality of true propositions,
every element in the psychical totality being the
awareness of a determinate element in the other
totality.2

But we have long ago convinced ourselves that this
theory will not hold ; and in any case the advocates of
the view, which we are at present examining, are not
entitled to borrow their answers from it. For (i) they
do not accept the analysis of judgement into a non-
mental proposition and a psychical awareness. Truth
and falsity are for them predicates of judgement, not
qualities of one severed factor in judgement. And
this recognition of judgement as the inseparable unity
of thinking and the object thought, debars them, as

1 Cf. above, p. 50, note. * Cf. above, pp. 35-7.

92 THE NATURE OF TEUTH

we shall see presently, from maintaining without
inconsistency that any single judgement can in
isolation be a fit subject of which to predicate absolute
truth. Moreover (ii) they would hardly acquiesce in
the conception of knowledge as a totality of beliefs in
a totality of true propositions. For such totalities
would seem to be aggregates or sums, since each
constituent of either totality is absolutely independent.1
But they profess to regard knowledge as a ' system '
of truths ; and they mean by a ' system ' a whole
possessed, in some degree at least, of pervading unity,
and not the mere aggregate or de facto resultant of the
constituent parts.

§ 33. (i) A judgement, as the inseparable unity of
thinking and the object thought, is a piece of concrete
thinking. The precise nature of its affirmation, its
precise meaning, is largely determined by the con
ditions under which it is made. The judgement
occurs in a particular context, it issues from a special
background, it concentrates in itself various kinds and
degrees of knowledge. Its meaning is coloured by
all these determining factors, which together (and
with others) constitute the medium of any piece of
concrete thinking. The student may use the same
words as the master of the science ; but the judgement
of the latter, though linguistically the same as that of
the student, conveys a meaning enriched by the whole
systematized knowledge which forms the background
of his scientific thinking. Such a background is
focussed and concentrated, more or less, in every
judgement which he makes, or again in every judge
ment which he ' accepts ' from another person. For
such acceptance is really an appropriation, which
invests the adopted judgement with meaning largely
derived from the appropriator's own mental 4back-
1 Of. also above, pp. 44-50.

DEGREES OF TRUTH 93

ground'. Every judgement, as a piece of concrete
thinking, is informed, conditioned, and to some extent
constituted by the appercipient character1 of the mind
which makes it, just as what the histologist sees under
the microscope is conditioned by the scientific know
ledge which has trained his 4 eye ' and ' informs ' his
vision ; or what the critic sees in a picture, or hears
in a symphony, depends upon the appreciative insight
which his aesthetic training and his original artistic
capacity have contributed to form. To the boy, who
is learning the multiplication table, 32 = 9 possesses
probably a minimum of meaning. It is simply one
item of the many which he is obliged to commit to
memory. Three times three are nine, just as three
times two are six, or as H2O is water, or as mensa is
the Latin for table. These are * truths' which he
accepts and must not forget, but which he does not
understand. But to the arithmetician 32 = 9 is
perhaps a shorthand symbol for the whole science
of arithmetic as known at the time. As a piece of his
concrete thinking, it may signify all that could be
read in it and expressed by the best arithmetical
knowledge hitherto attained.

And though, in considering the meaning of the
universal judgements of science, we are not concerned
with the concrete thinking of the individual mind
qua l this ' or ' that ', qua differentiated by the idiosyn
crasies developed through its particular psychological
history ; yet we are concerned with judgements in
which thinking and the object thought are inseparably
united. We may refer such judgements to ' the
scientific mind' as acts of its concrete thinking,

1 The expression * appercipient character ' was suggested to
me by Professor Stout's treatment of ' Apperception ' in his
Analytic Psychology, Book II, chap. viii. But Professor Stout must
not be held responsible for the use which I am here making of
the idea.

94 THE NATURE OF TRUTH

without deciding whether we mean to postulate a
universal mind, or merely a purified and typical
individual mind. But 'the scientific mind', however
vaguely we may use the phrase, at least commits us
to the assumption of a determinate and developing
* appercipient character ', which charges with a deter
minate meaning the t universal judgements of science '
wherein it finds its expression. The meaning of any
judgement of science is vitally dependent upon the
system of knowledge which forms its context, and
which is the * appercipient character ' of ' the scientific
mind' at that stage of its development. And this
appercipient character, as l the scientific mind ' passes
through the various stages of its development, under
goes a modification which is far more akin to the
organic growth of a living thing than to increase by
aggregation or to change by elimination and addition
of constituent elements. Or could the change of
appercipient character in the scientific mind — as
embodied e. g. in the development from the Ptolemaic
to the modern system of astronomy — be adequately
treated as an affair of plus and minus, as a dropping
out of some judgements and a taking up of others ? Or,
again, would it be maintained that the discovery of
the differential calculus left the contents of 'the
scientific mind' unaltered, and merely added fresh
elements to the old stock? Has not the entire
character of the mathematical mind been changed
by the discovery, so that every judgement which it
makes is invested with a new significance ?

§34. I have tried to show that no judgement can
comprise its meaning in itself, if ' judgement ' signifies
a piece of concrete thinking and not an entity inde
pendent of mind altogether. The universal judge
ments of science are abstract, i. e. purified from
irrelevancies. The concrete thinking expressed in

DEGREES OF TRUTH 95

them is not the thinking of a 'this-now', not the
thinking of a mind immersed in the tangle of restrict
ing conditions, which differentiate it as my mind and
my opinions from your mind and your opinions.
Nevertheless it is the thinking of a mind at a
determinate level of development ; and the scientific
judgements draw their meaning from the system of
knowledge which informs that stage of ' the scientific
mind '.

But it may be thought that the arguments which
I have advanced are too psychological in character.
And though I do not believe that this objection holds,
I will try to confirm my position by arguments of
a somewhat different kind.

We have seen that the universal judgement of
science would most naturally take the form of a
reciprocal hypothetical. It affirms a reciprocally-
necessary implication of two contents. It states, not
merely that A and B are always found together, but
that, given either, the other must be. Now the logical
necessity, which this 'must' expresses, is to bind
together two different contents formulated precisely
qua different. For A is not to include any elements
of B, nor B of A ; and yet A in its distinctness is to
necessitate B, and vice versa. And this is impossible,
except in so far as A and B, whilst definitely distinct
from one another, are yet rooted in a common ground
as being the differences of a concrete identity. The
judgement collapses into a tautology unless A and B
retain their reciprocally exclusive distinctness ; but it
loses all rational or logical necessity unless A and B
manifest one and the same individual significant
content, as two distinct features in the articulation
of its systematic identity. And indeed the judge
ments, which we quoted as instances, all of them
involve more or less explicitly an identity, within

96 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

which their antecedents and consequents are taken,
of which these are distinctive features, and on which
the necessary connexion between them is based. Two
equal angles, if they are equal angles of a triangle,
necessitate the equality of the two opposite sides,
themselves a distinctive feature of that triangle. The
multiplication of 3 by itself (within the constitutive
conditions of the numerical system, but not otherwise)
necessitates 9 ; and if, subject to those same conditions,
you take the square-root of 9, the result must be 3.
So, the development of the cholera bacillus must
produce cholera, if both the development and the
disease are distinctive modifications of the same
determinate identity, viz. an animal organism of
a certain type. Or, to put the matter in a more
familiar form, every hypothetical judgement involves,
and more or less explicitly states, a categorical basis :
and only on the assumption of that basis is the
affirmation of the hypothetical possessed of meaning.1
And the basis involved by the universal judgements
of science is, in the end, when you trace their implica
tions to their ground, that sphere of being which the
science in question expresses in the whole system of
its reasoning.

§ 35. No universal judgement of science, then,
expresses in and by itself a determinate meaning.
For every such judgement is really the abbreviated
statement of a meaning which would require a whole
system of knowledge for its adequate expression. It
is this larger meaning, embodied more or less fully
in such a system, which, so to say, animates the single
judgements and gives them determinate significance.2
To take such a judgement in isolation is to take it
in abstraction from the conditions under which alone

1 Cf. Bosanquet, Logic, Vol. I, pp. 252 ff. ; Knowledge and Reality,
ch. i and iii. 2 Cf. above, p. 16.

DEGREES OF TEUTH 97

its meaning can be determinate : and the restoration
of those conditions, i. e. the thinking the judgement
in the context which it demands, eo ipso modifies the
vague indeterminate meaning which it possessed in
isolation, if indeed in isolation it means anything.
For, strictly speaking, it is not possible completely
to isolate such a judgement. Some categorical basis
is involved in every hypothetical judgement, and some
1 appercipient character' must inform every piece of
concrete thinking. This is not so obvious in the
simple instances which we quoted. For the assump
tions, e. g. of the numerical system and of Euclidean
space with its determinate types of plane figure, have
become instinctive to us. The assumptions of these
categorical bases, and the * appercipient character'
of the mind therein expressed, are so familiar to
us that we take them as a matter of course. Any
and every mind, we tacitly assume, approaches
the study of the world with the same elementary
notions of number and of plane figure, with unques
tioning acceptance of the general features of the
numerical and spatial systems which underlie our
sciences of arithmetic and Euclidean geometry. We
take for granted this typical ' appercipient character ',
and the numerical and spatial conditions of things
which it carries with it. But, however right we may
be in thus postulating a uniform intellectual back
ground for all judging subjects, we ought not to ignore
the control which it exercises on the single judge
ments. Because the categorical basis of the judgement
32 = 9 is identical for all judging subjects, and
because they all do, as a matter of fact, judge under
the assumption of the same basis, we are not therefore
entitled to isolate the single judgement. 32 = 9, as
a scientific judgement, is a piece of the concrete think
ing of 'the scientific mind'; and the ' appercipient

98 THE NATUKE OF TEUTH

character ' of that mind, even if it be the actual charac
ter of all contemporary minds, cannot be left out of the
reckoning. The numerical system in its fundamental
features is tacitly accepted as part of the framework
of the world. It is assumed in every judgement
that any one makes about numbers, and in many
judgements about other things. But it is the cate
gorical basis which the single hypothetical judgements
of arithmetic imply, and their meaning is essentially
dependent upon it. And the same holds good, mutatis
mutandis, of the single judgements of plane geometry
and their categorical basis, viz. Euclidean space.

If we had taken less elementary and less familiar
instances the matter would have been more obvious.
For the labour required to formulate a universal judge
ment of science in a more special subject-matter, or
the effort of moving through a long process of analysis
and demonstration to the discovery of such a judge
ment in a territory hitherto unexplored, would con
vince the most sceptical. In such cases, the mind has
to be raised to the requisite appercipient level — it has
to acquire a certain appercipient character by mastering
a system of judgements — before it can formulate the
universal judgement in question. And the judgement,
when formulated, is devoid of meaning to every one
who does not approach it through the system of know
ledge in which it has its determinate position. We
suppose ourselves to understand the judgement 32 = 9,
even though we have no intelligent grasp of the system
of arithmetical science which it involves : for the
terms are familiar, and we possess at least some
rudimentary acquaintance with the nature of number.
But we could not even suppose ourselves to understand
an isolated universal judgement of science e. g. in
Thermodynamics, or in Trigonometry, or in Physio
logy, unless we had reached the formulation of the

DEGREES OF TRUTH 99

judgement through the methodical scientific investiga
tion on the results of which it depends. For even
apart from the technicality of the terms in which it
would probably be expressed, the judgement would
bear no meaning for a mind whose i appercipient char
acter ' had not been formed by special study of the
subject-matter in question.

But if no universal judgement of science can be
isolated from its scientific context without losing its
determinate meaning, neither can it, in that isolation,
be t absolutely true'. For a judgement which is
4 absolutely true ' must presumably persist as such
even in the ideally complete system which would
express the whole truth. Doubtless the body of
knowledge, which we call a 'science', falls short of
ideal completeness. But, in comparison with a single
judgement, it is relatively complete and therefore
more nearly adequate to express the whole truth.
Yet in such a body of knowledge the judgement, as
isolated and as possessed of indeterminate meaning,
no longer finds a place. The same form of words
may, or may not, be retained ; but the meaning
affirmed (i. e. the judgement) is in the ' science ' deter
minate, and its determination is not a mere external
addition of new bits of meaning to .the indeter
minate meaning of the isolated judgement. The truth,
which the isolated judgement conveyed to some
extent, but neither wholly nor purely, is more
nearly expressed by it in its context : but ' it in its
context' is not a single judgement, but a system of
judgements.

§ 36. (ii) And this brings us to the second question,
to which we demanded an answer.1 For the advocates
of the absolute truth of the isolated judgements regard
a 'science' as a systematic whole; and they would

1 Above, § 32.
G2

100 THE NATUKE OF TEUTH

repudiate the idea that a sum or aggregate of truths
could constitute such a whole of knowledge. Yet, if
e. g. in the science of arithmetic there are contained
single judgements, each of which is true per se without
reference to any others, and true in precisely the same
sense whether taken per se or taken as the basis of
further judgements which are inferred from it, what
becomes of 'the science of arithmetic'? Arithmetic
would seem to be a whole, some at least of the parts
of which retain in the whole the identical character
which they possess per se. If so, is the development
of a science merely the addition of truth to truth ? Is
geometry neither more nor less than the aggregate of
geometrical truths ; and are the single arithmetical
truths merely collected into the science of arithmetic,
itself the sum (or the class) of arithmetical judgements?
To treat a science as a sum, aggregate, collection^ or class
of single truths, each of which is what it is in its single
ness and remains unchanged in the collection, is (I
should agree) utterly inadequate as a theory of know
ledge. It is as if one were to treat the Choral Symphony
as a collection of beautiful sounds, Othello as an aggregate
of fine ideas, or a picture by Eembrandt as a sum of
colours and lines. But is not this the logical conse
quence of the view which we are criticizing? No
doubt our opponents will deny that they are com
mitted to this un we] come position. ' Geometry,' they
will say, t is certainly not, on our view, a mere aggregate
of truths. It is through and through a system of truth,
and precisely for that reason the parts of that system,
the single judgements, must themselves be true. The
nature of space reveals itself in every fragment of the
Extended. To know a triangle, even if you only
know that it is a plane three-sided figure in which
equality of two of the sides reciprocally implies equality
of the two opposite angles, is so far to know the nature

DEGREES OF TRUTH 101

of Space. And that knowledge is not altered. As
you learn more about the triangle and about other
forms of figure, you are indeed increasing and com
pleting your knowledge of Space : but this is to confirm
and fulfil your previous knowledge, not to condemn
nor in any sense to change it. It is your view (and
not ours) which renders it impossible to conceive
knowledge as a system. For a system implies elements
with determinate natures in determinate relations.
But in your system of knowledge which is the relatively
complete truth, there are no determinate elements or
relations, but all is shifting. Or, if you take the
elements as determinate, on your view every one of
them is false : and a system of falsities cannot be the
Trut^ If every note is out of tune — or again if each
note shifts its pitch to meet the shifting pitch of each
of the others — there will be no symphony. And so,
unless 3x3 are 9 and remain 9 unalterably, your " sys
tem " of arithmetical truth will be nonsense.'

Now here there seems to be a confusion. For
(a) if, in knowing the reciprocal relations of the two
sides and angles of the isosceles, I really knew the
nature of Space as expressing itself therein, my
knowledge of the isosceles would be ' complete', i.e.
as full and perfect as geometrical science can make it.
It might be called l absolute ', if it were not misleading
to call knowledge of Space (i.e. knowledge of the
Universe in respect only to its extendedness) absolute.
But such knowledge of the isosceles could not be
expressed in a single judgement. It would be com
plete knowledge of Space in its systematic totality,
and nothing short of the whole system of geometrical
reasoning would be adequate to express it. On the
other hand (6) if I know the isosceles only so far
as the isolated judgement carries me, in that frag
mentary knowledge my grasp of the nature of Space

102 THE NATUKE OF TEUTH

is correspondingly vague and subject to modification.
Knowledge of the Whole and knowledge of the Parts,
where the Parts form an intimate Whole like that
of the spatial system, involve one another. But each
involves the other at the same level. Immature
knowledge of some or all of the Parts is immature
knowledge of the Whole, and full knowledge of the
Whole is full knowledge of each and all of the Parts.
Nor is the passage from immature to full knowledge
the addition of perfect knowledge, bit to bit. The
passage is not an increase by aggregation, but a growth
by expansion from within.

Certainly a system must be a whole of interrelated
elements ; and the elements and their relations must
have distinguishable and determinate characters. But
those characters attach to them, and are determinate,
in the system : and in the system the elements are
certainly not the same as they are outside, if outside
they are at all. The notes of the symphony must
have and retain a determinate pitch : but their pitch
is determined by the functions which they fulfil in
the symphony. In a sense, no doubt, the pitch of the
several notes could be fixed in terms of vibrations
without reference to the harmonies which they
constitute in the symphony. And the single judge
ments, isolated from their scientific context, or taken
in a relatively-immature scientific context, possess
some meaning and some truth. But the nature of the
notes, as constituents of the symphony, is through and
through determined by their harmonic relations in the
symphony, and is in those relations not what it would
be if the several notes were sounded in isolation. And
the meaning of the single judgements, when they are
abstracted from their scientific context, is a caricature
—or at best a faint shadow — of their determinate
meaning in the system of the science. In that system

DEGEEES OF TRUTH 103

alone, where they possess their fullest significance,
do they possess their highest degree of truth. Hence,
though 3x3 are 9 and remain 9 unalterably, the
significance of this judgement — and therefore its truth —
depends upon the numerical system in its totality,
and ultimately upon the character of the Universe
within which the numerical system is a necessary
subject of human thought.

§37. The result of the preceding arguments is,
briefly, the following. Every universal judgement of
science (whatever may be the case with other types of
judgement) is essentially a constituent of a system
of judgements. The system as a whole affirms a
relatively self-contained meaning, embodies a concrete
and determinate significance. Any constituent judge
ment of the system in vital coherence with the other
constituents affirms a determinate meaning, because it
is the emphatic and concentrated affirmation of a
distinct, though inseparable, feature of the fuller
significance. Determinate significance or meaning,
therefore, is the character of the context, within which
every single ' universal judgement of science ' has its
logical being and function. This context, as a concrete
unity of significance, invests the several enunciations—
so long as they are not severed from it — with determinate
meaning : and in the logical continuity or unity of
that context, they are * pieces of concrete thinking',
i. e. l affirmations of meaning ' or ' judgements ' proper,
and not mere sentences or sets of words. The fuller
significance, which is affirmed in the system of
judgements as a whole, is affirmed in its many
different ' moments ' or ' emphases ' as the determinate
relatively-partial meanings of the several judgements.
As a concrete unity of significance its identity is, so
to say, ' many-faceted ', and it can obtain adequate
expression only through the different affirmations

104 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

emphasized in the various constituent judgements of
the system. Truth is predicable in various degrees
of the significance as expressed in the system of
judgements, or in the subordinate groups within the
system, or in any of the single judgements ; and the
degree of truth is measured by the degree of fullness
of expression which the significance obtains in each
case. But though the significance pulsates through
all the several judgements of the system, it refuses
to be dissected into detached bits of meaning, or to be
confined within a single judgement taken in isolation.
And in this sense no single judgement possesses
meaning or truth.

§38. The second main kind of judgement, which
I propose to consider, may be called the judgement of
fact. Under this heading I include (a) historical
judgements, (fr) descriptive and classificatory judge
ments, and (c) judgements of perception. We may
select as typical instances : (a) t Caesar crossed the
Eubicon in the year 49 B. c/ ; (b) * The native tribes of
central Australia regulate their intermarriages by an
elaborate totemic system ', and l The whale is a
mammal ' ; and (c) ' This tree is green '.

With respect to all these judgements we have to
show that their ' truth ', so far as they are l true ',
attaches to them not in isolation but qua involving a
whole system of judgements. And with respect to
all of them, we have once more to meet the contention
that they affirm, taken in and by themselves, absolute,
final and unalterable truth. For such * judgements of
fact ' seem at first sight to stand out against our view
even more obstinately than the * universal judgements
of science '. They are absolutely true, it will be urged,
under the relations and subject to the conditions
(temporal, spatial, and so forth), within which their
meaning is affirmed. They state certain facts or

DEGEEES OF TEUTH 105

events, or certain actual features and relationships
of existing things : and their statement is wholly true
of just those facts and events, or features and relations
of actual things. And, further, it is manifest that
their truth is unalterable, provided there is no mistake
as to what they affirm, i. e. as to what l their truth ' is.
No doubt the content of such judgements, as they are
formulated, is indeterminate. For it is fixed and
defined by a complex of relations, which the judge
ments imply, but which they do not (perhaps could
not) fully express within their formulation. Hence
the truth expressed in them is vague and slight, and
capable of infinite further determination. But any
further determination — even e. g. that which Omni
science would give to them — would not alter, although
it would supplement, the truth which they contain for
you and me when, and as, we make them.

Caesar did cross the Eubicon in 49 B. c. : and this
brute fact, enshrined in the series of past events and
thus for ever placed beyond the reach of change1,
is affirmed in the judgement. This at least — the
minimum of meaning affirmed in the judgement — is
a grain of solid truth, which nothing can destroy or
modify. So too, the native tribes of central Australia
do regulate their intermarriages by an elaborate totemic
system, and the whale is a mammal. For, however
our interpretation of the native customs may expand
and alter, the former judgement expresses an estab
lished fact, which our improved anthropological theory
must admit and reckon with : and no change in our
classificatory system of the animal kingdom can deprive
the whale of those characteristics, to the presence of
which the latter judgement bears witness. Even if

1 On the principle expressed by Agathon,

yap avrov /cat, $eos
TTOL^LV acrcr' av f)

106 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

the whale should become extinct, and the central
Australian vanish from the face of the globe, the
judgements remain wholly true under the conditions
involved in their content. For they never affirmed
the perennial existence of their subjects ; but only
that those subjects, when and as and if they existed,
possessed certain attributes. And the same holds of
the judgement of perception. For if we say ' this tree
is green ', this is doubtless indeterminable for our
knowledge, i. e. for our discursive thinking. Yet,
even if Omniscience were to determine this, what is
true for us of this tree (as fixed for us now by per
ception) would remain true of this tree as exhaustively
determined by the infinity of relations forming the
content of that Omniscience : though no doubt more
would be true for that absolute knowledge of this tree
than merely what is now true for us. Further, this
tree persists through a period of time and changes its
properties. In the autumn it is brown, in the night
it is black, and always (while it exists) it is much
besides i green '. But still this tree is green : and the
fact that it is much more besides, and that its greenness
changes and vanishes, does not annul nor alter the
fact that it is green here and now, viz. under the
conditions in which the judgement claims truth. Nor,
lastly, is the truth of the judgement rendered ' relative'
by the fact that l green' is relative to the normal
human vision. For that too is implied in the content
of the judgement as affirmed and as claiming truth ;
and, if true at all, the judgement is absolutely and
wholly true. We mean to predicate of ' this tree '
a quality, which to the present normal human vision
appears as ' green ' ; and this fact — the fact affirmed
in our judgement — will hold, arid hold unaltered,
even though the appearance would be different to
the colour-blind, or to the eye of a fly, or to the

DEGREES OF TRUTH 107

normal human vision as it may be two thousand years
hence.

§ 39. Yet the judgement of fact, in spite of its
apparent solidity and self-dependence, comes in prin
ciple under what has been said of the universal
judgement of science. What it affirms is subject to
a complex mass of conditions unexpressed and yet
implied. It draws its meaning and its truth from an
inarticulate background of this kind. The judgement
of fact, indeed, if it is to affirm definite meaning,
demands the articulate expression of this background
in the form of an explicit system of judgements. And
yet in that system the original judgement, as for
mulated in isolation and as the mere statement of
fact, would no longer persist.

The i brute fact ' that Caesar crossed the Rubicon in
49 B. c. is pregnant with significance, owing to the
concrete political situation within which it took place.
But the actual event was not a nucleus of ' brute
fact ' encased, solid and distinct, within a surround
ing complex of conditions. It was Caesar, at the
head of his army and animated by conflicting motives
of patriotism and ambition, who crossed. And he
crossed the Rubicon at this determinate political
juncture, with a full consciousness of the effect of
his action on the political crisis at Rome. This — and
more — is the meaning of the historical judgement in
its proper context, its definite meaning. This concrete
happening is 'the fact' affirmed in the judgement,
if indeed you can arrest the expansion of its meaning
even here. We can be sure, at any rate, that the
actual happening contains no bare crossing of a stream
by a man in the abstract as a solid grain of fact, separ
able from a complicated setting which particularizes it.
If the judgement of fact disentangles this, and affirms
this as l fact ' within a context otherwise contributed

108 THE NATURE OF TEUTH

by inferential construction or historical imagination,
it is confusing a mere abstraction with a constituent
element of the actual event.

i Well/ I shall be told, ' the brute fact still remains.
Caesar did cross the Eubicon. You cannot get over
that/ But I am not maintaining that the judgement
of fact, even when taken at its lowest, is wholly false.
It is not wholly false, even when it is as nearly
1 isolated ' as may be, i. e. when its implied and appro
priate context is as little developed as possible. I am
only denying that, as thus taken, it is wholly or
absolutely true. In the context of a biography of
Caesar, the judgement would express a fact revealing
Caesar's character : in the context of a history of the
decline of the Roman Republic, it would express
the death-knell of republican institutions. In either
context, the judgement would have a determinate
meaning : but in that determinate meaning the
* brute fact ' — the supposed meaning of the ' isolated '
judgement — would not linger on side by side with
additional elements of fact. Such truth as the
' isolated ' judgement involves — and every judgement
involves some truth — ' persists' in the fuller truth
of the biography or the history, not as a pebble
persists in a heap of pebbles, but as the first
rough hypothesis survives in the established scientific
theory.

The descriptive and classificatory judgements fall
under the same general principle readily enough.
They are possessed of i truth' in so far as they
affirm a determinate meaning, i. e. as ' moments ' or
' emphases ' of the significance affirmed in a sys
tematic whole of knowledge. Indeed, if we were
challenged, we should find it difficult to vindicate
their supposed distinction, as t judgements of fact',
from the ' universal judgements of science.' Even

DEGREES OF TRUTH 109

the descriptive judgement, as we saw1, does not
really profess to be a categorical statement of the
actual features of existing things. It looked as if it
were merely calling attention to the fact that an
actually existing tribe actually observes certain in
teresting restrictions in the intermarriages of its
members. But it has not the courage to stake its
truth on the actual existence of its subject, and
thus it becomes a hypothetical judgement affirming
a connexion of content. And of course the classifi-
catory judgement passes at once into the universal
judgement of science. i The whale is a mammal ' is
no assertion of a de facto coincidence of predicate
and subject. It means, t if whale, then mammal/
and challenges that complete purification which would
convert it into the affirmation of a reciprocal necessary
implication.

Nor, lastly, can the judgement of perception stand
out against this conclusion. Its definite meaning, or
its l truth', depends upon a 'background' implied in
its formulation, and demands articulate expression as
a system of judgements. In this respect it falls into
line with the other judgements of fact, exhibiting
special affinity with the historical judgement. But it
differs from the latter in the greater vagueness of its
formulation. The context which it demands is most
remotely suggested by what it actually says ; and the
articulate expression of its implied ; background '
requires a level of thought far in advance of the level
at which the perceptive judgement as such is formu
lated. Hence the judgement of perception, as such
and as formulated, is entitled less than most
judgements to claim absolute truth. For it is the
product of a comparatively low grade of experience.
It does not persist as such and unaltered in the
1 Above, p. 106.

110 THE NATUKE OF TEUTH

thought which has risen above the level of everyday
conversation, of description of particular matter of
fact, and of the practical affairs of life. Even here,
indeed, there is more than the judgement of 'this'
1 now ' and ' mine ' : and the more does not leave the
judgement of perception pure and unadulterated and
without internal modification. And at any rate it is
a totally inadequate vehicle for the expression of
knowledge which has any claim to be exact. In the
main, and broadly speaking, scientific thought moves
in universals. i This ' and ' that ', and the distinctions
fixed by reference to the individual subject, give place
in science to reflective determinations, which are
revealed by analysis in the sensuous datum, but which
are not identical with it. Knowledge, in short, begins
with the discovery and the formulation of universal
and necessary connexions of content. And the advance
of knowledge leaves no vague sensuous subject (no
' this tree '), no vague sensuous attribute, and no mere
coincidence of attribute and subject. The more
adequate knowledge of 'this tree' is not an accumu
lation of judgements of perception, but a revolution
in which ' this tree ' is swept away and determinate
connexions between determinate universal concepts
are substituted. In the science of botany a judgement
of perception like 'this tree is green' finds, as such,
no place.

§ 40. Nor will it do to protest, ' But the fact
expressed in the judgement of perception remains
unalterable. For suppose our knowledge to expand
until it covers all time and space ; suppose even that
it becomes Omniscience. Yet, within that complete
and all-embracing experience, the original judgement
will persist as a clear, if somewhat attenuated, truth—
a thread of pure gold within the infinite consciousness.'
There is indeed a sense in which this contention is

DEGREES OF TRUTH 111

true : but in that sense it hardly seems relevant.
Omniscience, we may admit, must be knowledge of
everything ; and in the infinite experience nothing
can be lost. Every fact and every feeling (everything
in any sense real), as an element in that experience,
is invested with the timeless necessity which defies
change or destruction. Nothing, we may agree, is
' lost ' ; and in this sense the past and the future i are '
no less and not otherwise than the present, error and
sin possess the same necessary being as truth and
goodness, and there is no difference between the trivial
and the important.

But in what precise sense is the fact expressed in
a judgement of perception unalterable ? i This tree is
green ' expresses what is matter of immediate experi
ence to you here and now, and to other sentient
subjects under the same conditions. It is true within
a narrowly restricted area ; and beyond that area its
truth is liable to modification and perhaps to destruc
tion. The experience, and the expression of it, are
no doubt necessary incidents in the world-process, or
necessary elements in the infinite experience. But
they are ' necessary' precisely as and when and how
they occur in the process or subsist in the experience.
In so far as the infinite experience is complete and all
at once, all the elements thereof are for the infinite
subject timelessly actual. But in so far as the infinite
experience appears as a world-process and unrolls
itself in time and space, the elements have that
actuality which belongs to them as such appearances,
i. e. they occur under determinate limitations of time
and place, and not otherwise. Thus the immediate
experience and its expression in the judgement of
perception are i unalterable facts' in their actuah'ty,
viz. as possessing their determinate position in the
series of events. And if the world-process were, so

112 THE NATURE OF TRUTH

to say, to go back upon itself, and to unroll its series
of events afresh from the beginning, these experiences
and their expressions would recur in their positions
with ' unaltered ' actuality. The mummies would walk
the earth again, and give expression to their feelings
in 'the same' judgements of perception that were
passed by the ancient Egyptians : and thus (but not
otherwise) the i unalterable truth ' of a judgement of
perception might be vindicated. For the judgement
4 this tree is green ' expresses what is actually matter
of direct experience to you and to other sentient
subjects. A hundred years hence you and your
vision, they and their experiences, 'this' tree and its
state, have vanished into the past, and cannot for
human knowledge be restored as suck.

It is irrelevant to insist upon the ineffaceable reality
of all the elements of the infinite experience ; and it
is a confusion to identify their ' reality ' as elements
in that experience with their ' truth ' as entering into
the texture of human knowledge. The sentient
subjects of the past, their immediate experiences, and
the * truth ' of their judgements of perception as
expressing those experiences, have as such vanished
for us. They are at best for us the precarious pro
ducts of a most elaborate inferential reconstruction,
which in any case can never actually reinstate them.
The matter of their experiences, in so far as it
constitutes the significant content of their judgements,
has passed over into the fabric of our knowledge.
In that fabric their judgements of perception persist
and cling to life. But the distinctive features of those
judgements, their individualities, are lost, and the
life, to which by a metaphor you may say ' they cling ',
is not their life which they formerly enjoyed. The
sciences of botany, of the physiology of the senses, of
the physical conditions of colour, &c. — these may be

DEGEEES OF TEUTH 113

said to absorb and to preserve the * truth* of such
judgements as l this tree is green '. But the sciences
neither contain any judgements of perception as such,
nor preserve their i truth ' in an unaltered form.

§41. In the above hasty survey of certain typical
instances of 'true' judgement, I have tried to show
negatively that no judgement in and by itself is
absolutely true ; and positively that so far as a judge
ment is * true ' at all, * its ' truth is really the character
of a meaning which requires for its adequate ex
pression a system of judgements. No judgement is
ever entirely severed from a larger background of
meaning, though the background may be relatively
obscure except at that portion of itself which is
thrown into relief and formulated as this judgement.
But this judgement is ' true ' only so far as it is the
affirmation of a determinate meaning, i.e. only so far
as the Relatively-whole meaning of the background,
which it implies, emerges as the explicit context
fixing the definite bearings of the judgement. The
judgement affirms 'its' most determinate meaning
(and is, therefore, most ' true ') when the background
is fully articulate as a system of judgements, into
which the judgement in question fits as a determining
and determined member. The degree of 'its' truth
depends upon the degree of wholeness or self-
containedness of the meaning expressed in such
a system, i. e. depends upon the completeness of
the coherence of the system. And this result seems
to confirm the ideal of truth, as we described it in
terms of the coherence-notion. For the ideal of
absolute truth, by reference to which we are measuring
the relative degrees of truth in the various systems
of judgements, and (through them) in the single
judgements, is the completely individual, self -sustained,
significant whole. The truth, we seem to see, emerges

JOACI1IM H

114 THE NATURE OF TRUTH

in its perfect completeness as an individual meaning
with an internal logical connectedness and articulation.
Its articulate connexion demands discursive expression
as a system of judgements. Its individuality requires
self-containedness or complete self-coherence of the
system. And this seems to be the ideal, which human
knowledge involves and partly attains ; though it can
never be adequately, fully, or finally embodied within
the actual knowledge of finite subjects. For actual
human knowledge is never completely self-coherent,
if only for the reason that it is growing in time. And
if the ideal is never fully embodied in the whole of
actual human knowledge, a fortiori it refuses to dwell
entire within * a science ', and of course minime within
a single judgement.

§42. But in reality we are still far from having
established the coherence-notion of truth. The appa
rent ease with which we have brought together the
* truth' of human knowledge and the ideal of the
coherence-notion, is due to a degradation of the latter,
and an ambiguity in our account of the former. For
we have lapsed into a static conception of the ideal.
We have talked complacently as if it were a finished
complete whole of truth ; and we have made no attempt
to dwell on what formerly we emphasized, viz. its
dynamic character, as a self-fulfilling life or movement.
And if we were challenged as to how such an ideal —
a rigid, static, finished system — is related to, or implied
by, the developing human knowledge, we should find
ourselves in an indefensible position. On the other
hand we have brought human knowledge nearer to
the ideal by a loose and ambiguous use of the terms
' meaning ' and ' significance.' A judgement, we said,
is * a piece of concrete thinking,' the ' inseparable
unity of thinking and the object thought ; : and, in
virtue of this unity, we regarded the judgement

DEGBEES OF TEUTH 115

as affirming l meaning ' or as possessed of l signifi
cance.' 1 But this is not the sense in which the ideal
of the coherence-notion was a * significant' whole or
a self-contained l meaning '.

We had agreed that a judgement was no complex
of two independent factors related by the cognitive
relation; and in this sense, and by contrast with the
rejected view, we were entitled to speak of judgement
as ' a piece of concrete thinking/ or as i the affirmation
of meaning '. Further, we had explained that the
meaning affirmed in the universal judgements of
science was freed from the purely personal pecu
liarities of the psychical medium of this or that mind's
thinking ; and the same freedom might be vindicated
for all the judgements which we considered. Hence
the l concrete thinking ' was not the actual thinking
of my mind taken in all the accidental and confused
psychical setting which differentiates it from the
thinking of your mind. We were therefore entitled
to assert that a judgement is the affirmation of universal
meaning, a piece of the concrete thinking of 'the
scientific mind '. But the ' universal mind ' thus pos
tulated — or the typically sane or scientific mind2 — is
still subjective in a sense which I must now try to
make clear.

I do not mean that ' the scientific mind ' need be
conceived as the abstract common subject from which
the differences of this and that mind have been dropped
out, nor as the fictitious individual mind uniting in
itself — by the licence of our imaginative construction —
all the scattered intellectual qualities of the scientific
thinkers whom we admire. It is quite possible to
conceive ' the scientific mind ' as a concrete universal
subject, which in ' the pieces of its thinking ' — i. e. in
the judgements of science — affirms a meaning universal

1 Cf. above, pp. 92-9. 2 Cf. above, pp. 93, 94.

H2

116 THE NATUKE OF TRUTH

and yet concrete. Such a meaning would demand for
its expression the relevant differences of ' emphasis '
which attach to the scientific thinking of the different
individual men of science. It is a truism that every
thinker, in accepting a theory, makes it his own.
And the converse ought to be recognized as no less
a truism — that every theory, for complete expression
of its meaning, must pass through different minds and
manifest in itself the many * emphases' of their
intellectual individualities.

But still 'the scientific mind' is over against a reality
to be known, and its l concrete thinking' is about
something other than the thought. We may speak
of a judgement of science as an ' inseparable unity of
thinking and the object thought ': but we must inter
pret object thought as the content of the thinking, or as
the what of which the actuality of the thinking is the
that. The l meaning', in short, is still adjectival. It
is a predicate, which, in the judgement or system of
judgements, is * affirmed of ', or ' referred to ', reality.
It is, to use a somewhat crude metaphor, neither on
earth nor in heaven, but suspended midway between.
Not on earth ; for it is freed from the irrelevant
psychical setting, which would constitute it an actual
thought occurring as a term in the series of modifi
cations of an individual's consciousness. And it is not
in heaven ; for it is not substantial, but a i wandering
adjective ' waiting to be joined to the substantial
reality.1

§4:3. The system of judgements which we have
shown to be involved in the single l true ' judgements
is a body of knowledge about reality. It is a * meaning7
in the sense of a logical content, not in the sense in
which the ideal of the coherence-notion (the 'significant
whole ') is ' meaning ;. We started, in fact, from the
1 Cf. F. H. Bradley, The Principles of Logic, Bk. I, chap, i, §§ 2-12.

DEGKEES OF TEUTH 117

position of current Logic. We assumed the finite
knowing subjects, and over against them the reality
to be known. We recognized a ' universal' or 'typical'
scientific mind as the subject, whose concrete thinking
is judgement as affirmation of meaning. But the
meaning thus affirmed is a mere ' logical idea,' a
'floating adjective/ a shadowy tissue of knowledge
between the knowing subjects and the reality. Even
if we could maintain that, as the concrete thinking
of ' the scientific mind ', it has secured a lodgement
in an actuality, still it remains subjective ; for it is
a qualification referred to the reality, and not the
substantial reality itself in its self-fulfilment. An
articulate whole of ' meaning ' in this sense of the
term cannot be 'true' in the manner demanded by
the coherence-notion. For it refers beyond itself, and
cannot, by the very conception of it, be self-sustaining
or self-complete. Its ' coherence ' would be a mere
formal consistency, which would leave the solid reality
out. It inevitably suggests correspondence in some form
as the standard of its * truth '. And we have failed to
show that the 'truth' of human knowledge is a
' symptom ' of the ideal truth, which we described in
terms of coherence. We have failed to show that the
substantial significant whole expresses itself both in
our knowledge and in the reality known, as the
ground of that ' correspondence ' which we employ
in our finite experience as a sign of truth.1

But though we have failed, we can perhaps see
more clearly the reason of our failure, and thus
prepare for a fresh attempt. We started from the
finite experiences, and tried to show that their ' truth '
was in the end derived from the ideal experience.
We hoped by this method to show loth that the
ideally-complete truth, as conceived by the coherence-
1 Cf. above, pp. 16, 17.

118 THE NATUKE OF TKUTH

notion, was no idle speculative dream, but the solid
substantial life of the actual finite experiences ; and also
that the measure of their actuality and l truth ' was to
be found in the ideal. And we failed, because, in
starting from the finite experiences, we took them for
granted in their apparent independence of the ideal.
We assumed the severance between the finite thinkers
and the real world, which they think about and
endeavour to know. And even when, by an effort,
we got free from the psychical machinery of their
thinking1, we were still moving in a sphere, where

1 I do not inquire how the logician can pass from the
1 psychological individual ' to the * logical subject ', from this
actual thinking (with all its psychical machinery and particular
setting) to the thought which claims truth as affirming universal
meaning. The logician, I am convinced, never really starts with
this individual thinker in the sense supposed ; and, if he did, the
passage from this psychological fiction to the subject of knowledge
would be impossible and beyond all explanation. The distinction
(which e. g. F. H. Bradley has used) between ' idea ' as psychical
image or symbol and l idea ' as logical content, is valuable as a state
ment of the sense in which the logician speaks of * idea ' ; and
presumably it was never intended for any other purpose. The
solipsistic individual, conscious originally of a succession of
psychical events as his own, and conscious of these alone, is
a discredited relic of subjective idealism, and no logician can
be asked to explain by what process these psychical events are
converted into logical contents or universal meanings. If the
psychologist chooses to postulate such a stream of psychical
events as the machinery of the individual's thinking, that is
his affair, though we may think his psychology strangely anti
quated. But if the psychologist calls these events ' images ' or
' symbols ', we must be on our guard. For this ' psychical
imagery ' is not what the subject thinks, but the supposed
machinery of his thinking ; just as the inverted image on the
retina is not what the subject sees, but part of the supposed
physiological machinery of his vision. The * images ' or ' events ',
in short, in so far as they are the machinery of thinking, are
neither images nor events for the thinker. And when the subject
thinks of the psychological machinery of his own thinking, the
' images ' or ' events ' which he studies are universal, like all
objects of thought, and no longer the perishing terms in the
unique series which is supposed to constitute his stream of con
sciousness. The psychical events or images, in fact, are now
events and images for him, and for any other mind if he chooses

DEGKEES OF TKUTH 119

the separation between the knowing mind and the
reality known is fundamental and not to be overcome.
Within such a sphere, ' truth ' inevitably implies two
factors ; and so long as the duality is maintained,
some form of the correspondence-notion is the only
possible theory of truth. It appears to be the general
opinion that knowledge essentially involves a duality
of this kind, and that the logician must work within
a sphere thus irremediably divided. Hence current
Logic, consciously or unconsciously, employs the
notion of truth as correspondence, and, if that notion
be challenged, throws the burden of justification on
Metaphysics.

§ 44. But Metaphysics cannot acquiesce in the
severance of finite thinkers from one another, nor in
the severance of the judging mind from that about
which it judges. And if the maintenance of such
a duality is necessary for current Logic, then either
current Logic must be superseded by a new Logic
working within a hypothesis which Metaphysics can
accept ; or it must be recognized that Logic, as
a partial science based on a fictitious assumption,
formulates conclusions which are not merely pro-

to describe them ; and his thinking of them requires (on the
supposed psychological theory) another stream of events as its
machinery. And if it be admitted that 'image' is a misleading
expression, and * symbol ' be preferred, I should still distrust the
theory. For is the stream of psychical events symbolic of the
logical contents ~by convention, as a system of marks traced on paper
symbolizes a system of significant sounds ? If so, then the subject
must know the set of symbols and the set of symbolized meanings
together with the principle of their correspondence, if the
' psychical events ' are to symbolize anything for him ; and this
knowledge will be inexplicable on the theory. Or does the
psychical symbol suggest the logical idea — the universal meaning
— naturally, as the rosebud suggests the rose? If so, then the
universal meaning is itself present in, and as, the psychical
* symbols ' ; and we shall have recognized that the ' psychological
individual ', with his purely particular stream of purely particular
'ideas', is an unwarranted fiction.

120 THE NATUKE OF TEUTH

visional only, but also of necessity to a large extent
false. For the notion of truth, which it employs as
its standard, is inadequate and — unless modified in the
light of the coherence-notion — wrong. But it cannot
be so modified until the duality, on the maintenance
of which its whole procedure is based, is discarded.
It is not enough to say : l We, as logicians, work with
the correspondence-notion of truth. We admit that
this notion is inadequate. But we trust to Metaphysics
to establish the ideal of coherence as the basis which
supports and justifies the " truth " of correspondence '.
This is not enough, unless a continuous passage can
be shown from that conception of things, which
renders the coherence-notion possible, to the dualistic
conception which is involved in l correspondence '.
And it hardly seems possible to do this without
fundamentally reconstructing current Logic. For it
is essential to the coherence-notion that there should
be no severance, no unpassable gulf, between the
judging mind and that about which it judges ; but it
is essential to the correspondence-notion that this
severance should be, and be maintained.

Yet it is impossible to leave Metaphysics and
current Logic in this irreconcileable antagonism.
Logic, no doubt, is primarily the theory of finite
thinking : and the truth achieved in such thinking
is partial, relative, and imperfect. But it is recognized
as thus deficient, and the degrees of its relative
perfection or imperfection are measured. And this
implies in the finite thinker — and in the Logic
which reflects upon finite thinking — the possession
of absolute truth in some form. We cannot, then,
escape the difficulty by saying that Logic is a partial
science, concerned with human knowledge only and
employing an imperfect ideal of truth. For human
knowledge is essentially the knowledge of a mind in

DEGREES OF TRUTH 121

some sense possessed of absolute truth ; and Logic
itself, in recognizing the imperfection of the corre
spondence-notion, implies the grasp of the perfect
notion.

The only solution, it would seem, must lie (a) on
the part of Logic, in a more frank recognition of the
purely pro visional character of its dualistic assumptions,
and of the modal nature of the knowing mind as the
subject of knowledge ; and (b) on the part of Metaphysics,
in an attempt to show the negative element in the
ideal experience. Metaphysics, in other words, must
endeavour to reveal the relative independence of
subject and object as essential to the very nature of
the ideal, thereby furnishing the relative justification
of the correspondence-notion of truth.

CHAPTEE IV
THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND ERROR

§ 45. There is a side of our subject which we have
hitherto neglected, and this neglect is perhaps the
chief cause of our failure to grasp the nature of truth.
Moral goodness lives in the contest with evil ; physical
health emerges in contrast to disease and often in the
triumph over it. And neither the moral philosopher
nor the physiologist can afford to neglect these i nega
tive' elements. Similarly — at least in human ex
perience — truth is everywhere confronted with false
hood, and error is the inseparable shadow of knowledge.
The antagonism is vital to the nature of the conflicting
contraries, and neither can be understood apart from
the other.

We have already seen reason to think that there is
a fundamental opposition of some kind in the very
heart of things. For ideal experience, as we saw, must
be conceived dynamically and not statically ; as a
living, self-fulfilling process, not as a rigid structure or
a finished quiescent whole. And all movement, pro
cess, and life most certainly involve a negative element.1
They exhibit a l being', which emerges in contest with
a i not-being '. They manifest an identity which per
haps overcomes otherness and difference, but assuredly
does not extinguish them.

1 Cf. above, pp. 76, 77. I am not suggesting that a quiescent
systematic whole could be apart from a negative element. All
system essentially involves distinction and negativity. But this
is, a fortiori, manifest in ideal experience, if it is a system which
must be conceived under dynamical categories. Cf. also below,
pp. 137, 138.

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND EEEOE 123

The opposition between subject and object, the
maintenance of which human knowledge demands,
and the genuine (if relative) independence of these
two factors, suggested the same conclusion to us from
another side. We can no longer acquiesce in the view
that, while evil and error exist of necessity ' on earth '
as the antagonists of goodness and truth, ' in heaven '
there is pure affirmation.1 We are committed to the
recognition of a negative element in ideal experience
itself, and of some form of otherness in the very being
of truth which will justify the relative independence
of subject and object within human knowledge.2 The
only question for us is as to the exact nature of this
negative element, this fundamental opposition in the
heart of things ; and we take up the study of Error
and kindred matters with the hope of finding an
answer.

§46. It will be as well to lay down an obvious
distinction at the outset. I will state it in the tra
ditional terms, without at present attempting to define
them further. The opposition, with which we are
concerned, is an opposition of contraries, not of contra
dictories. Evil — the wrong in conduct — is the con
trary of the right. Error — the false in knowledge —
is the contrary of the true. Evil falls within the
moral sphere as the expression of a deliberate moral
will. Its antagonism to the right is the hostility of
a positive opponent, not the sheer absence of moral
quality ; for that is a bare negation which removes
the act in question from the sphere of conduct

1 Cf. Plato, TheaetetuS, 176 A 'AXA.' OVT aTroAeVflai TO. *a/ca

to ®eo8(o/3€ — VTrcvavTLOv yap Ti TO) dya0u) del elvcu dvay/o; — OUT' eV 0€ot?
avra. ISpvcrOaL, TTJV Se Ovrjrrjv <f>vcriv KOL rdvSe TOV roirov TrepiTroAei e£
dvuy/oys. Sio /cat 7retpao-$cu ^pr/ eV^eVSe e/cetcre <f>€vyuv on ra^tcrra. Plato

himself exhibits a profounder insight elsewhere. Cf. e.g. Sophist.
254 B-259 B.

2 Cf. above, pp. 115 ff.

124 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

altogether.1 Similarly, the false in matters of know
ledge, the error with which we are here concerned,
is a determinate opinion in positive antagonism
to the true. The mathematician e. g. may be l igno
rant' in respect to chemistry, in the sense that
for him chemical phenomena simply are not. This
kind of l ignorance' is the sheer absence of appre
hension, the gap in consciousness, to which Plato
assigned TO p.rj ov as the correlative sphere. It is
not false thinking or error, the contrary opposite of
truth.2

§4:7. We can proceed at once to consider a view of
error which is connected with the correspondence-
notion of truth. A judgement, Aristotle tells us 3, is
true if it unites or separates according as things are
really conjoined or dissevered. And a judgement is
false if it unites where really there is severance, or
separates where really there is union. Hence we

1 ' Sins of omission ' mean, in ordinary usage, failures to do
certain things to which we recognize a moral obligation. They
are contraries of right, not contradictories. If I recognize a duty
to love my neighbour, it is contrary to right to disregard his
existence, or to ' omit ' the courtesies and kindnesses which neigh
bours expect. The failure to carry out my recognized duty is
in principle morally wrong, even though I stop short of positive
injury. But if there is a mere gap in my moral consciousness,
so that I am simply unaware of any duty towards my neighbour,
this ' omission ' itself, as a sheer absence, is morally nothing,
however much I may be to blame for conduct which has thus
paralysed my moral vision.

2 Cf. Plato, Rep. 476 E if. And cf. Aristotle's conception of
the immediate grasp of TO, ao-vvQcra, in respect to which a-H-drr) (error)
is impossible. The mind either thinks them, or simply does not
think them. In the first case, we apprehend them, and our
apprehension is eo ipso true ; for it is a grasp or a contact, in
which mind and its object are one. They — pure forms without
matter — are present wholly, in their undivided singleness, as the
content of our thought. In the second case, there is sheer ayj/ota,
a contradictory not-grasping. The forms are not apprehended,
i. e. there is a gap in the content of our thought. (Cf. Metaph. 9.
10, De Anima, 430 a 26 ; b 26, if.)

8 Cf. e.g. Metaph. 1027 b 18 ff. ; 1051 a 34 ff.

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND ERKOR 125

judge truly if our thought corresponds to the real
state of things ; and we err if our thinking is in
a condition contrary to that of the reality. If the
cohesion or the severance of the real things is con
ditioned solely by their essential nature, and is there
fore timelessly actual or necessary, the truth is a
' necessary ' or ' eternal ' truth. But if the cohesion
or the severance is due to extraneous conditions, and
is temporary, the same judgement will change from
true to false according to the change in its real
counterpart.

In reality e. g. Man is a composite whole, the
constituent elements of which reciprocally involve one
another and thus eternally cohere. The affirmative
judgements i Man as such is rational/ or ' Man is
essentially animal ', unite predicates with their subject
so that the union corresponds to the eternal cohesion
of elements in the real whole. Therefore these judge
ments are necessary and eternal truths ; and the
negative judgements, dissevering l animal ' or ' rational '
from i Man ', are false. The square is a composite whole,
the constituent elements of which — its sides, its angles,
its diagonals, &c. — cohere eternally in determinate
relations ; and t commensurability ' is eternally dis
severed from the diagonal in relation to the side.
Hence the negative judgement, 'the diagonal of a
square is not commensurate with the side/ separates
a predicate from a subject so that the ideal severance
corresponds to an eternal divorce in the real things.
Therefore this negative judgement is a necessary
eternal truth, and the affirmative judgement uniting
1 diagonal ' and * commensurability ' is false. Finally,
the real Socrates at times is really ill, at times illness
is really apart from him. Hence the judgements
* Socrates is ill/ ' Socrates is not ill/ change from true
to false or from false to true according as they agree

126 THE NATUKE OF TEUTH

or disagree with the temporary cohesion or severance
in actual fact.1

§4:8. A theory of knowledge which is content to
accept the correspondence-notion of truth as ultimate
stands for us already condemned. We need not repeat
our criticism ; but we may confirm it, by exhibiting the
helplessness of such a theory in face of the problem of
error. For, let us consider. When we think truly,
there is a real complex, a real one-of-many, constitut
ing the exact counterpart of the one-of-many which
is our judgement. When we think falsely, how is
our judgement related to the ' real things ' ? Is there
no counterpart in reality to the false judgement ? Or
is there a real counterpart ? and if so, in what sense ?

(i) i The diagonal of the square is commensurate

1 The reader will kindly bear in mind that my primary object
is to examine a certain type of theory, not to expound in all their
details the views which Aristotle actually put forward. I believe
that the above account is substantially accurate ; but it is difficult
to be confident, owing to the brevity and obscurity of some of the
passages in question. I cannot enter here into Aristotle's interest
ing attempt to show that the cohesion of the essential elements
in a composite substance is ultimately to be conceived dynamically,
as the formation of a vXy, or as the actualization of a Swa/us (cf.
Metaph. z. 12, and H. 6). Assuming that this attempt is success
ful, the Substance at this level of its unity would be the counter
part of vor/cris (intuitive apprehension), and not of judgement. The
complexes, which Aristotle regards as the real counterparts of
judgements, are possessed of a lower level of unity. So far as
one can judge by his instances, the ' things ', whose relations the
judgement faithfully presents or distorts, are a Substance and one
of its Attributes, viz. either an element in the essential nature of
the Substance, or a proprium or a o-^/x/^e^Kos of the Substance.
One would expect the true affirmative judgement to represent
a connexion between two elements within the Substance or
complex whole, rather than a connexion between the Substance
and one of its elements. But in that case there would be
nothing in the real counterpart exactly corresponding to the
distinction between subject and predicate in the judgement. And
this would probably be a serious difficulty to Aristotle, since
(as we know from Post. Anal., p. 83 a) the logical relation of
subject and predicate represented for him a real relation of
inherence of attribute in substance.

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND ERROR 127

with the side ' is a false judgement. It is false, let us
suppose, because there is no real counterpart of it.
There are squares, and sides of squares, and diagonals ;
and, again, there is commensurability. But there is no
square so constituted that the relation of commensura
bility holds between its diagonal and its side. Hence
to the separate constituents or materials of the judge
ment, there correspond real elements ; but to the
judgement as a whole, there corresponds nothing real.
Error consists in this form of combination of the
material elements of thought, which represents no
thing. The false judgement, taken in its entirety as
this form of combination of these materials — and, unless
so taken, it is neither a judgement nor false — is the
thinking which has nothing for its object. Error is
thinking the thing which is not. False thinking is
the thinking of nothing.

Now the theory started with the assumption that
thinking was the ideal representation of the real.
And though error misrepresented the real, it was still
the real which was misrepresented. Yet to i think of
nothing ' looks uncomfortably like ' thinking nothing ',
i. e. not thinking. And if we are put to it, we must
certainly agree with Plato that the man who judges
falsely, undoubtedly thinks, and thinks something.1
But perhaps we have made an unfair use of the
ambiguous term ' nothing'.2 For we must distinguish
between thinking-nothing in the sense of not-thinking,
and thinking-nothing in the sense of thinking of a
reality which is negative.

1 Cf. Plato, Theaetetus, 188 D if.

2 Cf. Lewis Carroll, Alice through the Looking-glass: 'Who did
you pass on the road ? ' the King went on, . . . ' Nobody/ said
the Messenger. 'Quite right,' said the King : 'this young lady
saw him too. So of course Nobody walks slower than you.'
*I do my best,' the Messenger said in a sullen tone. ' I'm sure
nobody walks much faster than I do ! ' ' He can't do that,' said
the Bang, 'or else he'd have been here first.'

128 THE NATUKE OF TKUTH

(ii) We are to suppose, then, that in a sense there
is a real counterpart of the false judgement. Error is
the thinking the thing which is not ; but ' the thing
which is not' is yet real. It is a negative reality.
Now, a true negative judgement, according to the
theory, is also a thinking the thing which is not. For
if I judge ' the diagonal is not commensurate with the
side of the square/ my judgement is true ; and it is
true because my thought of the not-being of commen-
surability has as its corresponding counterpart the real
absence of this relation. The severance, which my
negative judgement effects between the ideal elements,
corresponds to a real disunion of the elements in the
real whole. The 'judicial separation ' expresses a real
divorce. Hence the true negative and the false affir
mative judgements are i about ' the same real counter
part. Their difference consists in their contrary attitude
towards the same reality.1 The false affirmative judge
ment thinks that to be which really is not, whilst the
true negative judgement correctly thinks it not to be.
Error is not due to the absence of a real counterpart
of the judgement, but to the discordance of the counter
part and the thought.

But we have gained nothing by this attempt to
defend the theory. For (a) the conception of a
' negative reality ', which we have drawn into relief,
is precisely that which has to be explained.2 And
(b) even if this conception can be justified, error is
the discordant thinking of this negative reality. The
thinking what is real in a way in which it is not
real, this, and nothing short of this, is error. And
we have not shown that there is any real counter
part to this discordant thinking in its entirety. Hence
error remains a 'thinking-nothing' in the sense which
seemed to conflict with the basis of the theory.
1 Of. Aristotle, Post. Anal 89 a 23-37. 2 See below, § 50.

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND EEROE 129

Perhaps this last point may be made clearer if we
consider a false negative and a true affirmative judge
ment. It is true that 'the angles at the base of an
isosceles triangle are equal to one another/ because
(I presume) in the real counterpart of our judgement
the angles are really united by the relation of equality.
It is false that they are not equal. For to think thus
is to judge discordantly with the real counterpart,
since it is to think that i equality' not to be which
actually obtains. Now the counterpart of the true
judgement is here the being of equality within a
complex ; and the counterpart demanded by the false
judgement is the not-being of equality within that
complex. But if the demand were satisfied, the false
judgement would be true ; for it would represent fact.
It is false just because the not-being which it demands
is not, i. e. just because nothing corresponds to it.

§49. The above discussion may appear somewhat
sophistical. ' Your criticism/ we may be told, ' is
valid only against an antiquated form of the corre
spondence-theory of knowledge. Nobody would now
accept so crude a formulation of the relation between
thought and reality.'

Now a certain air of unreality does undoubtedly
pervade all examinations of this type of theory. For
the whole attitude which is being criticized belongs
to a superseded level of thinking. Hence any expo
sition or discussion is apt to appear like a caricature.
But I believe that the correspondence-notion of truth
logically carries with it the conclusion which we have
reached, viz. that error is the thinking of nothing. And
I will try to show that this is so.

We are to suppose (if I understand the position
rightly) that thought and reality are two spheres,
each a one-of-many-elements, which confront one
another. A judgement is true when its structure

130 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

is identical with the structure of that portion of
reality to which it, as a portion of thought, refers.
This identity of structure is ' correspondence ', and
it means that for every different element in the
thought-complex there is one, and only one, deter
minate different element in the real-complex. On
such a view, error must mean either the presence
of an element or elements in the judgement, to which
nothing answers on the side of reality ; or vice versa
the presence of an element or elements in the real,
without any elements in the judgement to match
them. Error, that is to say, is a i too-much' or a
' too-little ' in the thought ; and either alternative
means a sheer nothing, a mere gap, on one side or
the other. The error which is a ' too-much ' involves
elements in the judgement which are thoughts of
nothing. The error which is a ' too-little ' involves
real elements which are nothing to the erring person's
thought, since in his judgement there is no thought
of them.1

But we must be careful here, lest we fall into
confusion. We have been speaking of error without
sufficiently distinguishing. A's error, as it is for A
while he is in error, is one thing ; but A's error as

1 I have not forgotten the discussions in chapter i (cf. e.g. §§ 6,
8, 9); but I do not see how the recognition that the 'real'
must be for the judging subject in some sense (e.g. in the form
of feeling) affects the present question. For, if the correspondence-
theory be thus modified and refined, all thought, true and false
alike, is confronted with a content in the form of feeling. The
'correspondence', which is truth, holds between two factors
within consciousness ; and so does the ' discordance ', which is
error. And the only possible distinction between the two is (so
far as I can see) that either on the real-side or on the thought-side
— either in the content qua felt or in the content qua judged —
there is, in the case of error, a gap. The view that error is not
the thought of nothing, but the thought of one thing instead of
another (i. e. that the * discordance ' is displacement or disorder of
the elements), will be considered presently.

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND ERROR 131

it is for B, the person who recognizes that A is in
error1, is quite another thing. So long as A is in
error, the gaps on either side are simply nothing for
him- the superfluous elements in the real simply are
not at all, and the superfluous elements in his judge
ment are not ' superfluous ', since for him there is no
failure in the corresponding real, but a sheer unre
cognized gap. A'a error, therefore, while he is in
error, is for him neither a ' too-much ' nor a l too-little '.
On the other hand, A' a error for B, if B recognizes
it as error, is a * too-much' or a ' too-little '. B's thought,
we may suppose, exactly coincides with the reality for
him ; or, in B's mind, the content qua judged exactly
corresponds with the content qua felt. In his completer
knowledge, A9 a gaps (on one side or the other) have
been supplemented. B sees as deficiencies, which in
his own mind have been made good, the absences which
were in A, but which to A were nothing at all.

The result of this distinction is somewhat para
doxical. For it seems to follow that if A is to err,
his state of mind must be for him true. If A' a error
were error for him, he would have passed beyond it
on the way to truth. For it was B, as we saw, who
recognized A9 a error as error ; and the condition of
this recognition was that B himself should have
overcome and supplemented A9 a error in his own
completer knowledge.

Are we to infer that error is nothing but a super
seded stage in the development of truth ? That it has
no being except within the wider knowledge which
corrects it? When I am in error, I am for myself
judging truly ; and though subsequently I may realize
that I was in error, my error has then become for me
a subdued portion of a fuller truth. As error it exists

1 Or ' A's error as it is for A himself, when his knowledge has
advanced and he recognizes that he was in error.'

12

132 THE NATURE OF TRUTH

for me only in the past. And even when the past was
present, it was not error for me, but only for you, within
whose fuller knowledge it was a deficiency made good,
an error which had lost its sting.

Whatever may be the value of this suggestion, we
cannot pursue it further at present.1 We must return
to the correspondence-theory. Error, we have seen,
is for that theory a ' discordance ' between thought
and reality, or between a content qua felt and qua
judged; and the 'discordance' involves a sheer nothing
on one side or the other. And this is incompatible
with the initial assumption that thought represents
or misrepresents the real. For a sheer nothing on
the side of the real can neither be represented nor
misrepresented ; since, ex hypothesi, for the thought in
question it is nothing at all. And a sheer nothing on
the side of the thought neither represents nor mis
represents ; for it is not thinking at all.

We might indeed attempt to regard error as a
judgement in which, although all the elements had
their real counterparts, the inner structure was other
than that of the real. The false judgement would be
a one-of-many having a real one-of-many as its counter
part, but having its 'many5 displaced. The inner
detail in the judgement would be arranged in the
wrong order. We should think in the form BADC,
where the real counterpart was a /3 y 8. Error would
be the thinking one thing in place of another, where
the thought-elements had real counterparts, but the
thought-arrangement was confused, i. e. discordant with
the real arrangement.2

But the whole notion is too vague to help us. For
if my thought contains elements, every one of them

1 See below, §§ 51 if.

2 Cf. Plato, Theaetetos, 189 B if. (dXXoSo&a), and 197 B ff. (ry TOW

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND EEROE 133

having a counterpart in the real whole, any order in
which they are arranged in my thought will result in
* correspondence ' between the two wholes, provided
the several elements on either side are thereby coupled
one-to-one. The arrangement B AD C fulfils this
condition as well as e. g. ABC D or ADBC; i.e.
BADC is a l true ', and not a i false ', judgement.
Before the theory is entitled to speak of a ' wrong'
or ' confused ' order, of a i displacement ' or a ' thinking
one thing instead of another ', it must provide us with
a more exact determination of the kind of t corre
spondence ' constituted by the 4 right ' order.

If indeed the elements on either side determinately
involved one another in a determinate order, the case
would be different. The real would be a genuine
whole whose elements cohered, by the immanent
necessity of their nature, within the unity of plan of
the whole ; and the judgement BADC would similarly
be a genuine, though quite different, whole. But
then, in what intelligible sense could the judgement
possess counterparts of its elements in the real ? The
A in the judgement would not have the a in the real
as its counterpart ; for the ' real ' a is essentially
a constituent of a/?yS, and of this alone. It is
essential to the 'real' a that ft — a ft followed by y,
and a y followed by 8 — should succeed it. And this
order of succession, essential to the real whole, and
entering deep into the being of its elements as the
unity of plan which makes the many * one ', in no
way enters into the being of the element called ' A '
in the thought-whole. That is essentially preceded
by B, and followed by a D which precedes (7; and,
as a constituent of this quite other structural plan,
A is essentially bound up with BADC and with
this alone.1

1 The above argument of course assumes that a 'genuine'

134 THE NATUEE OF TRUTH

§ 50. We have left the conception of a l negative
reality ' unexamined and unexplained ; and we have
contented ourselves with showing that, with or with
out it, error constitutes a problem which the corre
spondence-theory of knowledge is unable to digest.
But it will repay us to investigate this conception now.

It is not difficult to see how Aristotle was led to
postulate a ' negative real ' as the counterpart of the
true negative judgement ; and, however crudely he
has formulated his view, it rests on a certain basis
of truth. If we regard the judgement as a synthetic
activity of the individual mind combining two i ideas '
into a single thought in which their union is affirmed
or negated1, it is evident that the truth or falsity of
the judgement must lie in its reference to a reality
other than the act of judging, i.e. other than the judge
ment itself. And if, further, this other is identified
with a reality independent of thought altogether — the
natural result of the tacit assumption that thought is
nothing but the individual's act of judging2 — the next

whole — a whole of the kind in question — cannot consist of
' independent ' elements combined by ' external ' relations. Cf.
above, §§ 15-17.

1 Cf. Arist. de Interpr., 16 a 9 ff. ; de Anima 430 a 26 if. ;
Metaph., 1027 b 17 ff. On the whole subject, consult Maier, Die
Syllogistik des Aristoteles, Part I, especially pp. 24 if.

2 No doubt Aristotle did not acquiesce in the somewhat crude
dualism which his theory of the truth and falsity of the judgement
involves. Thus e. g. his use of the distinction between immediate
or intuitive apprehension (1/0770-19) and mediate or discursive think
ing (Stavoia, Xoyos), and his conception of Oewpca as the ei/e/oyeta of
which fTTLo-Ttjfjir) is the Swa/xts (cf., perhaps, Metaph., 1087 a 10 ff. ;
De Anima, 417 a 21-9), indicate a serious endeavour towards
a more satisfactory view. The reality, which is other than judge
ment, is grasped by vcfycm, and thus is not ' independent ' of
thought ; and the abstractly universal knowledge, attained in
scientific demonstration, culminates in the intuition in which
knowing and known are inseparable sides of the one individual
'truth' or ' reality'. But the bulk of his theory of knowledge
proceeds as if his conception of the truth and falsity of the judge
ment were final ; and I see no evidence that he was prepared to

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND EKEOK 135

step follows very simply. For the t reference ' can be
nothing but correspondence, representation, repetition
of structure, or mirroring ; or, if the judgement be
false, discordance, misrepresentation, displacement, or
distortion. And since, in the synthetic activity which
negates the union of two ideas, I at times attain to
truth, there must be * negative realities ' (i. e. complex
wholes involving a real severance between their
elements) as the ; other' to which such negative
judgements refer. If my true judgements repeat the
structure of the real, the real on the other hand is such
as to be repeated in the structure of my true judge
ments. And thus, from the fact of true negative
judgements, we must infer the being of 'negative
realities ' in the sense explained.

Aristotle's formulation of his theory seems strange
and crude because he appears to treat the negative and
affirmative truths, and their corresponding realities, on
the same level He speaks as if ' the diagonal is incom
mensurate with the side of the square ' were a truth as
final and significant as e. g. ' the interior angles of a
triangle are together equal to two right angles ' ; and
as if the real counterparts of the two judgements were
each, equally and alike, a coherent self-dependent
entity. But the negative judgement in question is not
far above the level of the ' infinite' judgement (the
negative of bare exclusion), and is invested with a
minimum of significance. It is raised above this
vanishing-point of meaning because it vaguely and
implicitly affirms a quantitative relation, which con
stitutes a problem for a certain level of geometrical

reject it. As a rule, so far as I can judge, he leaves the two
conceptions of * truth ' standing side by side, without recognizing
their incompatibility. He does not succeed in freeing the ' truth '
of mediate thinking from its dualistic implications, or in reducing
it to a mere provisional stage of the complete conception of ' truth '
as intuitive.

136 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

knowledge. It denies that between the diagonal and
the side there is a quantitative relation which can be
expressed in terms of a common unit ; but the denial
is significant, because it implies that there is a quanti
tative relation of some kind. It is not a meaningless or
an ' infinite ' negation (like e. g. ' the diagonal is not
hot '), because its negative form conceals a challenge to
recognize this unfamiliar relation, and to attempt its
determination by new methods.

And if we speak of the l real counterpart ' of such
a judgement, its ' reality5 is of a most ambiguous
and imperfect kind. A hypothetical judgement, or
a rudimentary disjunctive, expresses a 'real counterpart '
in much the same sense and at much the same level.
In the gradual development of a science, the mind
begins by occupying a region of inquiry with a dis
junctive, whose alternatives are shadowy and abstract.
It maps out a sphere, so to say, into light and shade,
which (when the system of knowledge is fully articu
late) will reveal itself as an ordered scale of different
colours. It begins with ' either A or not-J.', and
passes into ' either A or B ', where the A defines
(whilst it excludes) J5, and the B (in its distinction from
A) throws A's positive character into relief. Or again,
it provisionally isolates certain features, and formulates
the consequences flowing from such abstractions ; or
it may proceed gradually towards a definite affirmation
through tentative circumscriptions of the field of
inquiry, removing suggested predicates and relations
one by one. Such levels of developing knowledge
appear in the form of abstract hypothetical and dis
junctive judgements, and of negations approximating
to bare exclusions. They are knowledge in the mak
ing ; and their l counterpart ' is reality emerging, not
yet fully manifest. The square with its internal differ
ences, its plurality of elements and their reciprocal

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND ERROR 137

relations, forms a relatively coherent system, stand
ing out with a certain self-dependence or individu
ality. But the square, in this its * reality', is the
' counterpart ' of full geometrical knowledge ; and the
* counterparts ' of the first rough judgements no more
constitute elements within the 'real' square than
those judgements themselves survive unmodified in
the system of geometrical science.

But there is a sense in which 'the real' is un
doubtedly negative, and in which every system of
knowledge, however complete, must include negative
judgements. For in any genuine whole the constitu
ents cohere in and through their differences. The
pieces of a puzzle e. g. combine just in so far as they
supplement one another. Each excludes the others
in space, each contributes what the others do not, and
all together fill in the extended unity of the whole.
The puzzle, as a definitely-shaped whole, is a unity of
many pieces, which stand out from one another even
in their combination ; and the edges by which they
unite are also the edges which mark them off from
one another. And in a more developed type of
systematic whole — a whole whose unity is a balanced
order of movements, or a planned co-operation of
functions — the negative element is no less essential,
perhaps more conspicuous. Such a whole (like e. g.
the Solar System, an animal organism, or a State)
maintains its being in so far as the parts co-operate to
fulfil a determinate scheme of functions. And such
co-operation is essentially also division of labour and
differentiation of functions. And even where the
whole is present in all its parts, and ' exclusion ' with
its suggestion of spatial separation no longer applies,
the parts express the whole with different ' emphases ' ;
and the difference of emphasis is essential, and is
a negative element. For otherwise the supposed

138 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

* whole ' would have collapsed into blank identity —
an identity which, qua not distinguished from any
thing, would itself have no positive character. If then
we place a systematic whole on one side as the i real
counterpart ', and a full systematic knowledge on the
other as its ' representation ', the differentiation of the
parts (or of their functions or their ' emphases ') is as
vital a characteristic of i the reality ' as their positive
natures; for their distinction from one another, or
what they determinately are not, is but one side of
what they positively are. And the systematic know
ledge, which is to represent this l reality ', will include
negative as well as affirmative judgements on the same
level of significance. Such negations would not
barely exclude, or vaguely imply a positive to be
revealed by the advance of knowledge. They would,
in and by their denials, throw into relief the positive
aspect of the ' otherness ' which they emphasize ; just
as the affirmations within the system would also
negate, inasmuch as they would affirm precisely, i.e. so
as to reveal the distinctions of that which they affirm
from its ' others '.

§51. Let us make a fresh start in our inquiry by
returning to a point which emerged in the above dis
cussion. We drew attention to a somewhat paradoxi
cal result, which seemed to follow from the distinction
between A's error, as it is for A while he is in error, and
as it is for B, or for A himself when he is aware that
he was in error. So long as I am genuinely in error,
it is essential (or so we thought) that I should believe
myself to be thinking truly. As soon as I recognize
that I am in error, or the moment that I even doubt
whether I may not be in error, I have passed beyond
error itself and am on the road to truth. l

Before proceeding in this line of inquiry, I must
1 Above, pp. 131, 132.

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND EEEOR 139

endeavour to dispose of an objection which threatens
to block the way altogether. For we may be told
1 You are committing an elementary blunder. The
state of mind of the erring person is a purely psycho
logical question, and has nothing to do with the nature
of error. That is a problem for Logic, or Theory of
Knowledge, or (if you insist on adopting a certain
attitude) for Metaphysics. In the progress of philo
sophy the concrete subject-matter has been mapped out
into different departments. Each department is con
stituted by the abstracting hypothesis, within which a
distinct branch of philosophy works. Thus Psychology
and Logic (in the ordinary sense of the term) have
become " special sciences ". Each works within a
different selective hypothesis, and each is concerned
with a different aspect of the concrete fact of error.
Your attempt to set aside this division, and to consider
the concrete fact " in the lump ", can result in nothing
but confusion.'

Confusion results, I should agree, if you first map
out the territories, and then neglect the divisions
which you have made. And confusion also results if
you obstinately persist in following a faulty map.
4 Are you so certain,' I should ask, ' that your division
of territories is right ? Is it not somewhat ominous
that the Logic and Psychology, which have grown up
within your demarcations, are confronted with prob
lems which appear to be insoluble, and lead back to
ultimate positions conflicting with views which your
own Metaphysics refuses to modify ?x And, after all,
I am asking for a very moderate concession, and the
risk of confusion is mine and not yours. For all that
I propose, is to set aside provisionally the current maps ;
and to examine the fact of error without prejudice, as
^y the divisions in question were not accepted.'
1 Cf. above, §§ 43, 44.

140 THE NATUEE OF TRUTH

We are then to consider A's error, as it is for A
whilst he is completely in error. A, let us suppose,
judges that the sun rises and sets and travels round
the earth. This is a description of certain phenomena
as they appear to A, an observer on the earth's
surface ; and A need not i err ' in so judging. For he
may be ignorant of astronomy and aware of his own
ignorance, and so make no pretence in his judgement
to express the nature of the sun and its relation to the
earth. Or he may know that the geocentric system is
no longer tenable as an adequate theory of the astro
nomical facts ; and so his judgement may be to him
a mere provisional description of certain phenomena,
whose full explanation he is content to leave in sus
pense. He may think of the sun rising and setting,
and thus interpret what he sees ; but he need not for
a moment suppose that the content of his judgement
is to survive as such, and without serious alteration,
within the coherent system of astronomical science.
Or, lastly, he may make the judgement with a full
knowledge of its significance, and of the qualifications
under which it could claim truth. The meaning of
his judgement would for Mm depend upon a back
ground of the fullest astronomical and optical know
ledge. And as a thought within that coherent context,
or as informed by the ' appercipient character ' of a
mind at that level of development, his judgement
would express for him the way in which the ordered
changes in the relative positions of sun and earth must
appear, under the determinate conditions of vision, to
a human observer at a determinate time and place.1

If we suppose A to pass through the various stages
which we have just sketched, he will be advancing
from unpretending simplicity through doubt and ten
tative suggestion to knowledge. But at no stage of
1 Cf., perhaps, Spinoza, Ethics, ii. 17SchoL, ii. 35 Schol.

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND ERROR 141

his progress will his condition be genuine error. At
the outset, his judgement expresses what appears to
him ; it professes to be no more, and it is no less.
He is, as it were, wandering along a path chosen for
his own pleasure ; and it is pleasant. He is not under
the delusion that he is exploring the country of astro
nomy. And when, in the second stage, the outlines
of that country loom up more definitely before his
mind, he is aware that its inner features are to him
still uncertain. He makes his judgement tentatively,
with the suggestion that, in selecting this path, he
may perhaps be opening up a high road in the un
known country. But he knows that he may be mis
taken : and with this knoivledge the ' mistake ' (if so it
prove) is not an ' error '. And when, finally, the
whole country lies plain before him, both in the inner
net-work of its roads and in its relations to neighbour
ing territories, he will recognize the exact bearings
of the path he has chosen. In the whole course of
his journey he has never ' mistaken ' one road for
another, in the sense of ' mistake ' which commits
and misleads. He has never walked along a path,
which was to end in a morass, under the confident
expectation of reaching a town.

But if A's condition is to be genuine error, his
* mistakes' must commit and mislead. He must
plunge into the wrong road with the untroubled
certainty that it is right. He must judge that the
sun rises and sets and travels round the earth, without
a doubt that he is expressing full astronomical truth ;
or, if he has doubted, he must have returned to
certainty with the added confidence of reflection.
A's judgement attains to its full stature of falsity
only within his conviction that his judgement expresses
the truth neither more nor less ; and in the unfolding
of that conviction A's error emerges in its full character

142 THE NATURE OF TEUTH

as the enemy of knowledge. For A's conviction will
unfold itself (if he be an astronomer) as a system of
theory which may bar the way for ages to the advance
of knowledge, or (if he be a dignitary of the Roman
Catholic Church) in the endeavour to save Galileo's
soul by threatening to burn his body.

Error, if the above account is right, is that form of
ignorance which poses, to itself and to others, as
indubitable knowledge ; or that form of false thinking
which unhesitatingly claims to be true, and in so
claiming substantiates and completes its falsity.1

§52. 'But surely,' it will be said, i there are
judgements which are false under any circumstances,
and any one who makes them is in error. All judge
ment, whether true or false, involves a subjective
certainty, which is belief in its truth ; but this does
not affect the question. If I judge that 2 + 3 = 6, or
that the sun goes round the earth, my judgement is
false and I am in error. And if I avoid the error by
judging under certain mental reservations, that does
not mean that a false judgement is no error if it be
made without belief. It means simply that I am
making different judgements. I am in fact judging
that 2 + 3 under certain fantastic qualifications are 6,
or that the sun, considered from a certain point of view,
goes round the earth.'

There is at first sight an attractive simplicity in
this way of putting the matter ; but it will not stand
against our previous conclusions.2 It assumes — what
we have seen to be untenable — that a judgement can

1 Cf. Plato, Sophist., 229 C :

HE. Ayvoias yovv ^u-eya TL fJiOL OOKCO /cat ^aAeTrov a^xopicryu-evov

opav elSos, Tracrt rots aAAois avrrj<s avrurTaOfJiOV /xepecrtv.

0EAI. ITotov STJ ;

BE. To firj KareiSora TL BOKCLV etSerai* Si ov KivSwcvci Travra

o<ra Stavota

2 Cf. above, §§ 31 ff. '

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND EEEOR 143

express determinate meaning, and be true or false,
in isolation from the context within which it is
formulated, or without reference to the * appercipient
character' of the mind which makes it. The judge
ment i 2 -f 3 = 6 ' is no more false as such and in itself
than a road is wrong per se and without reference to
the object of the traveller. There are no roads which
are such that to take them is eo ipso to lose one's way ;
and there are no judgements so constituted that the
person who makes them must be in error. The
judgement ' 2 + 3 = 6 ' is false because its meaning is
part of a context of meaning, and a part which
collides with the other parts. The judgement is
really * 2 + 3 conceived under the conditions of the
numerical system = 6 ' ; and the collision, the falsity,
and the error attach to the judgement qua brought
into connexion with the system of judgements thus
implied. There is neither collision, falsity, nor error,
in so far as the mind holds this element in suspense
against the remainder of the significant context of its
scientific thinking ; or, again, in so far as the mind,
by extending the field of its significant thought,
relegates the judgement in question to the sphere of
'fiction' or ' fantastic supposal', i.e. to a sphere of
meaning remote from the sphere of scientific thought,
and connected therewith by complex mediation. For
then the judgement is a fragment seeking admission
into the ordered whole of thought, prepared to under
go adaptation, and to acquiesce in whatever position
may be assigned to it. It is no longer a blustering
self-confident assertion, insisting upon the unaltered
maintenance of its individual character, and forcing
an entrance into this determinate sphere of thought.

It is this claim to express truth unqualified — this
arrogant self-confidence, with all the consequences to
which it may lead — that constitutes the 'sting' of

144 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

error. For though my error may prove the stepping-
stone to fuller knowledge in myself or in others,
my actual being in error was an insistent belief in the
completeness of my partial knowledge. And this,
with all the mischief that it may have entailed, is
a hostile element, which refuses to be worked in as
a necessary step in the advancement of knowledge ;
just as, though I may emerge from crime and sorrow
and suffering a nobler and a wiser character, the
actual pain of the suffering, and the actual degradation
of the crime, are positive evils not to be conjured
away, nor to be resolved into lesser stages in the
development of the greater good. If the only road
to truth and goodness lies through error and crime,
it is not prima facie the most direct conceivable.1
Tacking may be the only method of sailing against an
unfavourable wind ; but the advance is slow for all
that, and cumbrous, and involves loss of way at every
tack. Or — and this is a metaphor more closely fitted
to the facts — to be tossed from rock to rock across
a chasm is one way of reaching the bottom ; but it is
neither the shortest, nor the most painless, nor neces
sarily the least dangerous, route.

Though, therefore, it be admitted that A's error is
an error to him only when it is over, and to others only
in so far as they comprehend it as a harmless i moment'
within a wider knowledge; error is not thereby re
duced to 'a superseded stage in the development of
truth/2 For precisely that feature in error, which

1 I have not hesitated to speak of moral evil and crime, and
again of suffering and sorrow, as in some sense parallel in their
respective spheres to error ; and I have made a free use of them
as illustrations. But I cannot here enter more fully into the
analysis of these manifestations of the ' negative element '. The
problem of error is more than enough to occupy me. And if my
hasty references to these other forms of the negative are mislead
ing, I can but apologize to the reader, and beg him to treat them
as withdrawn. 2 Cf. above, p. 131.

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND ERROR 145

at the time robs it of its sting for the erring person
(viz. his untroubled confidence in the truth of his
judgement), constitutes the distinctive character of
error and its power for mischief. And this feature
is never annulled and never converted into an element
of the fuller knowledge. The triumphant development
of astronomy has neither annulled nor absorbed the
persecution of Galileo ; nor has the growth of a
nation's well-being wiped out the blood and the suf
fering of those who fought for its liberty, or rendered
unfelt the bitter bereavement of their wives and
children.

§ 53. Undoubtedly there is a sense in which error is
nearer to truth than blank ignorance, and crime is
morally an advance on the innocence which is without
' the knowledge of good and evil'. Undoubtedly, again,
a mind may through error have solidified and rendered
more concrete the substance of its knowledge, and a
will may have emerged from crime to a firmer grasp
and a fuller realization of the moral ideal ; and (for
all I know) an animal organism may, by conquering
disease, have heightened and extended its vitality. But
when all this has been admitted and properly empha
sized, error and crime still stand out as more, and as
other, than partial knowledge and imperfect goodness ;
and the feature on which I am insisting still remains
unaccounted for, and indeed unrecognized. The prob
lem of error has not been solved, because error itself
has never been seized at all. Error itself — the defiant
and uncompromising enemy — slipped through our
fingers before they closed to grasp the area of inquiry.

The above remarks apply, if I am not mistaken, to
some not uncommon attempts to formulate a solution
of the problem of error in the terminology of aesthetics.
A work of art — e. g. a picture, or still more obviously
a musical composition — is, as it were, a miniature

146 THE KA.TUKE OF TKUTH

significant whole ; and the character of its coherence
is beauty. A musical masterpiece is essentially a
self-fulfilment, which moves through opposition and
contrast, and which in that self-contained movement
makes and maintains its coherent individuality. The
opposition and the contrast, as moments in the process,
simply enrich the concrete individuality of the whole.
Chords which, if the movement were arrested, would be
discords (i.e. aesthetically hostile and ugly), within the
self-fulfilment of the whole significance contribute to
the increased fullness and grandeur of the harmony.
Hence it has become a commonplace to say that, in
a picture or a piece of music, the richness of the
colouring and the fullness of the harmony depend
upon the violence of the contrasts ; and we are asked
to view error and crime as discords which are resolved
in the harmony of truth and goodness, or as contrasts
which enrich and give concrete substance to the
significant wholes of knowledge and conduct. In
the work of art, none of the contrasting features
stand out in glaring hostility. As hostile and as
ugly, they are not any longer; and so, in the per
fection of knowledge and conduct, error and crime
as such are not at all. And having conceded so much,
we must surely go further. For outside the unity of
a work of art there is neither aesthetic beauty nor
ugliness. No chord, as such and in itself, is aesthetic
ally discordant or ugly ; and no colour, in and for
itself, can have aesthetic predicates. Similarly, an
action which, within the coherent system of reasonable
purpose, intensifies the realization of the moral ideal
by its contrast-effect, outside that system (where its
hostility would have free play) is not capable of
receiving moral predicates at all. And the ' error',
which within the coherent system of knowledge is
stripped of its hostility, and has become a necessary

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND ERROR 147

'moment' in the self-revelation of the truth, outside
that system rejects all logical predicates, and is neither
true nor false. And with this the solution may seem
to be accomplished ; for error and crime have as such
been removed altogether.

But the coherent systems of knowledge or of good
ness, within which error and crime thus disappear,
are not the one significant whole whose character is
(for the coherence-notion) truth. They are subordinate
wholes, relatively-coherent systems, constituted by a
selecting and abstracting hypothesis within the com
plete whole ; and it is a mark of their abstractness
that certain elements appear within them not at all,
or only in a mutilated form. Error, I am maintain
ing, is distinctively characterized by a discordance and
a hostility which debar it from becoming merely a
contrasting element within the developing system of
knowledge. In being treated as such a vanishing
contrast, it is stripped of that which makes it what
it essentially is, and it loses the very feature which
constitutes the problem for Metaphysics. If we draw
our examples from the contrasting differences and the
opposing elements within a work of art, and talk of
resolving discords into a fuller harmony, we must
not forget that the opposition, which constitutes the
problem of error, is deeper and more radical than the
mere contrast between lesser and fuller stages of
knowledge. Within the harmony of knowledge there
is no discordant element possessed of the genuine
ugliness of error. Error, as it calls for explanation,
is a ' discord ' which is resolved, if at all, only within
the self-fulfilment of the one significant whole.

§54. If the above argument is right, we have en
countered, as a distinctive feature within the fact of
error, a discordance too radical to be resolved into
harmony within the development of knowledge. What

K2

148 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

is the exact basis or principle of this discordance ? If
we can answer this question, we may find ourselves
face to face with that ' ultimate opposition in the
heart of things/ that ' negative element in reality/ of
which we are in search.

But before we can advance, we must remove a cer
tain vagueness in our position. As against the crude
dualism of the correspondence-notion, and the still
cruder pluralism which conceived truth as a quality of
independent entities, we are committed to some form
of monism. For the coherence-notion is essentially
monistic ; and though we have found problems within
that notion which we are unable to solve, we have not
yet abandoned the attempt to mould it into a form in
which it may overcome the difficulties. Our treatment
of error in the last four sections has assumed the
coherence-notion of truth as its basis ; but the basis
remains at present vague and undeveloped. We have
not expressly formulated the problem of error in terms
of a systematic theory of truth as coherence ; and
indeed we have no such systematic theory before us.
We examined the views of Aristotle as representing
the correspondence-notion ; but we have not studied
any typical representative of the coherence-notion.

Now the monistic system of Spinoza stands out in
the history of philosophy as representing the kind of
position which we have been trying to develop and
maintain. And if we trace the outlines of Spinoza's
theory of the nature of things, and follow him in his
endeavour to deal with the problem of error, we shall
have corrected the vagueness of our present attitude.
For we shall be studying a philosophy in which the
notion of coherence obtains definite form and syste
matic development, and in which there is a masterly
effort to reckon with the difficulties. Even if we are
forced to admit that error in its full discordance

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND EEEOR 149

refuses to fall harmoniously within Eeality as he con
ceives it, we shall at least have obtained a more
definite grasp of the problem. And if we are thus
enabled to disentangle the principle of the discordance
in error, we shall have made a considerable advance.
For then we ought to be in a position to see what kind
of remodelling Spinoza's theory would require to meet
the difficulty ; and in what way, if in any, his formu
lation of the coherence-notion could be transformed
into an adequate theory of truth.

If we are to appreciate Spinoza's position, we must
start with his distinction between * substantial' (or
self-dependent) and ' modal' (or dependent) being.
There is only one self-dependent being or Substance,
viz. the universe in its infinite or all-inclusive single
ness. All other so-called ' things ' follow from it as
the i effects ' of its immanent causality, and are
possessed of derivative or ' modal ' reality. In so far as
they are real they are ' modes * (phases, modifications)
of the one Substance. They are not 'in' themselves,
but ' in' Substance.

The one Substance, or ' God ', is absolutely single
and absolutely concrete ; i. e. God comprises, within
the indivisible unity of his individual being, all
positive characters in which reality is expressed.
Using the term ' Attribute' to mean 'that which
intellect perceives as constituting the essential nature
of Substance V God's infinite concreteness of nature, so
far as it is understood, demands an infinite variety of
Attributes for its expression ; or God includes, within
his complete being, absolutely all forms in which
reality can be manifest to intelligence. All the

1 Spinoza, Ethics, i, def. 4. I am assuming a certain familiarity
with Spinoza's terminology. Perhaps I may be allowed to refer
the reader to my Study of the Ethics of Spinoza, where I have
attempted to establish in detail the interpretation which I am
here stating dogmatically and in outline.

150 THE JSTATUKE OF TRUTH

Attributes together exhaustively manifest all the
aspects of God's essential nature. Each Attribute is
1 infinite in its own kind ', i. e. exhaustively expresses
Substance in one of its essential and ultimate charac
ters. But each Attribute, though thus including the
whole of the character which it expresses, excludes all
other features of God's essential nature. God, we may
say, is revealed whole in each Attribute, but differently
in each, and wholly only in all of them together.

Amongst the infinity of Attributes there is one
which Spinoza calls cogitatio. We may represent this
by ' Thought ', though (as will be seen) the English
term is not an adequate translation. The Attribute of
Thought is the ' ideal ' side of Substance, and is by its
very nature the awareness of itself and of all the other
Attributes or sides of God's essential being. God's
entire being, we may perhaps say, is reflected upon
itself, and this reflectedness is itself one of the ulti
mate characters of his being, viz. the character
expressed in the Attribute of Thought. And since
Thought, like every Attribute, is the exhaustive
expression of the whole of Substance in one positive
aspect of its essential nature, God's Thought is God
ideally manifest in his entire completeness ; i. e. it is
God adequately conscious of himself (viz. of all Eeal-
ity), and conscious of this consciousness of himself.

We need not concern ourselves further with the
infinity1 of Attributes which together constitute the
complete essential nature of God. For to the human
intelligence, God is manifest under two Attributes
only, viz. Extension and Thought. The Universe is
manifest to man as a Substance extended in three
dimensions, a corporeal or material Substance, and as

1 The difficulties which centre round Spinoza's conception of an
infinity of Attributes, perceived by ' intelligence ' but unknow
able to man, do not specially affect his theory of error.

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND EKKOR 151

a Substance instinct with life and consciousness, a
psychical, spiritual, or thinking Substance. And the
Universe qtta extended is reflected under the Attribute
of Thought, this reflection being also turned upon
itself. Hence the Universe qua thinking is (for human
experience) at once the soul-side of the Universe qua
corporeal, and the awareness both of itself and of its
corporeal 'object'.

We have now to bring out another side of Spinoza's
conception of God. God, as the absolutely self-dependent
being, is at once cause and effect of himself. As abso
lutely self-dependent, he is absolutely ' free' or omnipo
tent ; and the Attributes, in which his essential nature is
manifested, are so many lines of force * in which his
absolute power is actual. Considered as the Substance
whose unbroken unity includes an infinity of Attri
butes, or whose omnipotence acts in an infinity of
lines of force, God is natura naturans, the i free ' cause
of himself, i. e. of all that is. And considered as the
necessary effect of his own free causality, God is
natura naturata, the system of modes which flow from
his being as its necessary consequences. God the
cause (natura naturans) is the ground of God the effect
(natura naturata) ; and ' God the effect ' is the totality
of the necessary modifications of the one Substance,
conceived as a coherent system of differences immanent
within God's unity.2 Every mode within this system
is a state of God, i.e. a partial manifestation of Sub
stance expressed under all the Attributes.3 Or, for
human intelligence, the Universe is articulated as one
modal system, every mode of which is both ' Extended '
and i Thinking'. One and the same modal system,
with one and the same inner organization (order of
sequence or principle of coherence), is qua Extended,

1 Cf. e.g. Ethics, ii. 1, S. ; ii. 7, C. ; ii. 21, S.
8 Cf. Ethics, i. 29, S. 3 Cf. Ethics, ii. 7, S.

152 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

the world of bodies or the universe of material things ;
and, qua i reflected ' and ' reflecting ', the world of souls
or the psychical universe. The modal system thus
viewed in its complete coherence, as the totality of the
states of Substance conceived in Substance, is the time-
lessly-actual articulation of God's nature. Each mode,
within that system and in its dependence on God, is
' infinite ' and l eternal '. It is t infinite ' because the
limitations of its i essence ' are made good by the com
pleting context of the system.1 And it is * eternal'
because its ' existence ' flows necessarily from its
* essence ' as thus completed. In this necessary depen
dence it is l actual ' ; but not in the sense that it occurs
in time and space, and endures as an existent object
of perception. Its essence is a fragment of God's
essence, its timeless self-assertion a partial manifesta
tion of God's omnipotence. God's infinite power, or
self-maintenance, shines through all the modes and
invests them with eternal actuality or self-affirmation.2
The modal system under the Attribute of Extension is
the corporeal universe viewed as i one individual,
whose parts, i. e. all bodies, exhibit infinite variations
without any change of the whole individual.' 3 It is
the physical universe, as it would be for the clear
thinking of science and philosophy (ratio and scientia
intuitiva], not as it is for the confused picturing of
uncritical perception (imaginatio) ; not the phenomenal

1 Of. e.g. Ethics, v. 40, S.

2 Cf. e.g. Ethics, ii. 45, S., v. 29, S. The student of Spinoza
will fill in for himself the details which I have omitted here and
elsewhere, and will recognize the places where I have passed over
thorny questions in silence. It does not seem necessary, for my
present purpose, to enter fully into the many difficulties of inter
pretation which beset Spinoza's conception of the modal system ;
nor can I follow out in detail his doctrine of the three grades of
apprehension. Though I am far from holding that these are
matters of merely antiquarian interest, a full discussion of them
would take us too far from our present subject.

3 Ethics, ii. Lem. 7, S.

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND EEEOE 153

world with its shifting colours and sounds, its apparent
contingency and its arbitrary comings into being and
passings away, but a system of infinitely diverse motions
which maintain, in and through their diversity, one
and the same balance of t motion-and-rest '. And,
under the Attribute of Thought, it is the completely
coherent system of * ideas ' in which the ' infinite
intelligence ' of God is articulated. Every ' idea ',
qua sustained in that coherent context, is necessarily
adequate ; or as Spinoza expresses it, ' all ideas as
referred to God are true/ 1

Within the modal system of natura naturata every
1 idea ' (or mode of Thought) is at once the soul-side,
and the adequate apprehension, of a mode of Extension.
The ' bodies ' in which God's Extension is articulated,
and the ' ideas ' in which his infinite intelligence is
expressed, are each of them a determinate, self-main
taining, eternal mode of Substance under two of its
Attributes. And, in so far as l we ' are i modes ' in this
sense, our mind is a timelessly-actual differentiation of
the intelligence of God, and is the adequate apprehen
sion of a timelessly-actual differentiation of God's
Extension. ' Our ' mind is, so far, neither more nor
less than a thought of God, and a thought possessed of
a certain individuality or self-completeness ; and * our '
body is an essential modification of Extension, which
that thought expresses ' under the form of eternity.' *

§55. It is obvious that this individuality and self-
containedness of the modes within natura naturata is
relative only ; and Spinoza recognizes different grades
of individuality within the system of Extension, and
different grades of self-dependence or ' freedom ' with
in the ideal expression of the modal system.3 It is

1 Cf. e.g. Ethics, ii. 7, C. and S. ; ii. 32 and dcm.

2 Cf. Ethics, v. 22.

3 Cf. Ethics, ii. 13, S. ; iv (on the homo liber) ; v. 38-40 and 40, S.

154 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

also obvious that the recognition of any individuality — •
even a relative self-containedness— within the purely
affirmative being of God, is logically difficult, if not
impossible. And this is a point to which we shall
have to return, as it is here (in the exclusion of the
negative element) that Spinoza's formulation of the
coherence-notion is most open to criticism. But —
assuming for the moment the modal differentiation
of God, with the recognition of grades of relative
self-containedness in the modes — we have still on
our hands the whole phenomenal world, the ' things '
and i events' of ordinary consciousness.1 It is
here that the problem of error arises, and here that
Spinoza's theory is in part most successful and in part
most perplexing.

We have seen that the modes as they really are
(viz. as the immanent effects of God's causality) con
stitute a coherent system, and in that coherence are
yet differentiated and manifest a certain determinate
self-affirmation. There is grave doubt whether Spinoza
is entitled to admit this differentiation ; and, setting
that doubt aside, the principle on which the differentia
tion proceeds is far from clear. But at least we have
no right to assume that anything, which for uncritical
perception (for the picture-thinking of imaginatio) ap
pears as ' individual ' and as ' one ', stands out as
a single mode, as a self-dependent difference, in the
coherent being of God.2 My conscious 'self e.g. as
it is for me at any moment of my feeling, and again
my 'body', as it appears to me or another percipient here
and now, are * actual things ' from the point of view of
the ' imaginative ' apprehension. But the individuality
and self-containedness, which a confused perceptive
apprehension thus attributes to them, is not necessarily
the self-dependent being which belongs to the clearly-
1 Of. Ethics, ii. 29, C. and S. ; v. 29, S. 2 Cf. above, p. 61, note.

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND ERROR 155

conceived modes within natura naturata. We must
not assume that the i ideal' elements, of which our
self (as we feel it) is a complex, constitute a single
mode in the Attribute of Thought, or a self-contained
' idea ' in the intelligence of God ; nor that the
corpuscles, of which my body (as perceived here and
now) is the complex, constitute a single individual
mode in the Attribute of Extension. * Our mind is
an eternal mode of God's thinking ' ; but only ' our
mind quatenus intettigit '. And ' our ' body is an
eternal mode of God's Extension ; but only ' our '
body in so far as it is * an essential nature ' expressed
' under the form of eternity' in an ' idea ' of God.1

But though the * imaginative ' apprehension is
fragmentary and confused, it must (in so far as it is
thinking at all) fall within God's Thought. And the
complex of things and events, as it appears under the
i categories of imagination '2, must manifest the com
plete reality of God, however distorted and mutilated
the manifestation may be. For God is all ; and all
that i is ', is ' in ' God. Hence Spinoza endeavours
to express the world of appearance (the complex of
finite ' things ', contingent and transitory i events ')
in terms of God's causality ; and to extend his con
ception, that all human thinking is God thinking in
man, so as to cover even the error and falsity of the
' imaginative ' apprehension. The modes within the
coherence of natura naturata are possessed of eternal
self-affirmation ; and this is their full actuality. But
that full actuality is partially and imperfectly ex
pressed as existence in relation to a determinate place
and time ; as the i actuality ' which is duration in the
temporal series, and which characterizes the existent

1 Cf. Ethics, v. 40, S. ; v. 22.

2 ' Auxilia imaginationis ' (time, number, measure) ; cf. Spinoza,
Ep. 12.

156 THE NATUKE OF TEUTH

things and events in the phenomenal world.1 The
modes in this partial expression of their full being —
in their existence which is temporally and locally
limited — are ' finite ' ; for they have been torn from
their completing context, and their being is therefore
partly negated.2 And though, in their finiteness,
they are still effects of God's causality, they are effects
which depend for their being and occurrence upon an
endless chain of antecedent finite modifications of
God. Or, as Spinoza expresses it, every single thing,
which is finite and has a determinate existence, must
have followed from God so far as he is modified by
a modification which is finite and has a determinate
existence ; and similarly this cause or modification must
likewise have been determined by another modification
of God, which is finite and has a determinate existence ;
and that by another, and so on in infinitum.*

Thus, the endeavour to express the world of appear
ance in terms of God's causality, results in throwing
back into the nature of God the negative element, which
had been excluded. For the mutilation or partial nega
tion of the modes, which constitutes the characteristic
finiteness of the phenomenal things and events as they
occur i in the common order of nature ', re-appears in
God, the cause. It is only a God already infected by
an endless series of finite modifications who is the
cause of the finite ; not the God whose infinite being
is absolutely affirmative. And it will not help us to

1 Cf. Ethics, ii. 8 and C. ; v. 29, S. I am assuming that the
* rerum singularium . . . essentiae fbrmales ', of which Ethics ii. 8
speaks, are not the modes of natura naturata in their full being,
but a l moment ' of their full being which is supplemented by
their 'duration', i.e. their actual existence in time and place.
The point is very obscure, and I cannot here defend my interpre
tation. Cf. my Study of the Ethics of Spinoza, pp. 119-22, 221-5.

2 Cf. Ethics, i. 8, S. i 'Quum finitum esse revera sit ex parte
negatio . . . existentiae alicuius naturae, . . .'

3 Cf. Ethics, i. 28 and dem.

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND EEEOR 157

transfer the burden to the ' imaginative ' conscious
ness, as that for which God's completely affirmative
being * appears ' in the partly negated and mutilated
form of an endless series of finites. For ' imaginative '
apprehension is itself fragmentary thinking, modes of
God's Thought mutilated by being torn out of their
coherent context.1 And so the t world of appearance'
is Eeality as it is for an apprehension itself a member
of that world ; and the being of the inadequate appre
hension presupposes the being of the partly illusory
world which it was to condition.

§ 56. We are now prepared to state Spinoza's theory
as it applies to the problem of error.

* We,' so far as i our mind ' is clear thinking and
' our body ' an essential and eternal differentiation of
Extension, are a mode of natura naturata. Our mind
is a thought of God, and our body is the mode of
God's Extension which that thought ideally is and
adequately apprehends ; and this mode, both qua ex
tended and qua spiritual, possesses, in its dependence
on God, a determinate self-affirmation or individuality
which is tunelessly actual.

But ' we ', as existing in time and place, are mem
bers of the world of appearance, modifications of God
abstracted from their completing context, finite and
without genuine unity or individuality. From this
point of view, our soul is the l idea ' of an actually-
existing (i.e. temporally-durating) body ; or, rather,
our soul is a complex of ideal elements, the l reflec
tion ' of a complex of corpuscles.2

God's * infinite power of thinking' is articulated
into the system of self-contained ' ideas ', which are

1 Cf. e.g. Ethics, ii. 26, C. and dem. (with the propositions to
which it refers) ; ii. 29, C.

2 Cf. Ethics, ii. 11 (notice specially the demonstration, with its
reference to ii. 8, C.) ; ii. 13 and C. ; ii. 15.

158 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

the ' minds ' and the adequate apprehensions of the
modes of his infinite Extension. The content of God's
infinite intelligence, we may perhaps say, is a signifi
cant whole, a concrete meaning expressed in, and as,
many thoughts. The single thoughts have their full
significance only within the unity of meaning which
is the whole intelligence of God ; and their singleness
or full individuality is actual only in that coherence.
Yet some of them at least are possessed of a relative
self-containedness which renders them significant in
various degrees within their own contents. And so
far as a relatively self-contained thought of God consti
tutes our mind — i.e. enters whole into the content
of our thinking, and is whole as our thought — we
attain to truth ; for God is thinking in and as our
thought.

But God's ' infinite power of thinking ' also i ap
pears ' as the endless succession of finite (i.e. frag
mentary and mutilated) ideal elements, the soul-side
of the endless series of corporeal changes in the world
of finite bodies. The changes in the constituent
corpuscles of our temporally-existent body, and the
ideal changes within our temporally-existent soul
which ' reflect ' these bodily ' affections ', are effects of
God's causality mediated by an endless chain of ante
cedent changes. Though, however, such psychical
changes (perceptions, emotions, thoughts) are God
thinking in us, they are not necessarily God thinking
as our thought and as that alone. God's thought may
be, as it were, too large to enter whole and unmutilated
into the constitution of our mind. The ideal changes,
which are our thoughts, may be mere fragments of
a complete thought of God, which is distributed over
many different finite minds. When that is so, God's
thought constitutes the many different minds together,
but appears in each of them severally as a fragmentary,

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND EREOE 159

mutilated, and inadequate apprehension.1 And if a
mind, in which God's thought is thus mutilated, fails
to recognize the fragmentariness of its apprehension,
its apprehension becomes false and is error.

Thus, * in God ' there is no error ; for * in God ' all
ideas are in their coherent context, and therefore
complete and adequate. And the mere partialness
or inadequacy of an idea in the human mind does not
of itself constitute error. For this is a mere absence
of a supplementation, a sheer negative exclusion.
There is no positive quality in the inadequate idea
as such, which must be referred to God as a feature of
his being. The idea, which as referred to a particular
human mind is fragmentary and inadequate, in God's
Thinking — as distributed over other minds — is com
plete and adequate. As a mode of God's Thinking,
the idea is whole and entire ; not a patchwork of
many fragments, with barriers of division between
them. The idea only becomes error, so far as, in its
reference to the particular human mind, it becomes
a fragment isolated from its supplementing fragments,
and invested in this isolation with an individual self-
containedness.2 Then the mutilated fragment of the
idea, which is enclosed within the barriers of the
particular mind, appears for that mind, in its confident
self-assurance, as adequate and whole. ' Falsity con
sists in the privation of that knowledge which the
inadequate (mutilated and confused) ideas involve ' 3 ;
and error in the end depends upon the isolating

1 Cf. Ethics, ii. 11, C. '. . . When therefore the human mind is
said to perceive this or that, we mean that God, . . . qua con
stituting the essential nature of the human mind, has this or
that idea ; and when God has this or that idea, not only qua
constituting the nature of the human mind, but also qua possess
ing the idea of something else along with the human mind, then
the human mind is said to perceive a thing only partially or
inadequately.'

2 Cf. Ethics, ii. 32-4, 36 and dem. 3 Ethics, ii. 35.

160 THE NATURE OF TEUTH

self-assertion, whereby the finite mind, failing to
recognize its own incompleteness, is for itself an
independent and self-contained individual.

§ 57. Spinoza, if the above exposition is substantially
correct, seizes error in its distinctive character and in
its full discordance ; but in this full discordance error
will not fit coherently into his system.

Incomplete or fragmentary thinking, he rightly in
sists, is not as such false ; nor is the mind, through
which the complete truth obtains partial expression,
thereby in error. God's ' infinite intelligence' (the
modal system under the Attribute of Thought) is
articulate in and as the single ' thoughts', which
constitute the several * minds ' in their eternal being.
Thus the fullness of knowledge, which God is as
reflected on himself, is a concrete unity of meaning
self-affirmed in a plurality of different contributory
thoughts, or as a plurality of different individual
minds. Each mind is a ' part ' only of the complete
intelligence, each thought a fragmentary expression
of the whole meaning. But it is the whole meaning,
the one substantial significance, which is partially
expressed in each ; and the partial expressions are
the different ' emphases ' which its self-affirmation
demands. And since every mode of Thought reflects
not only a mode of Extension, but also itself, the one
substantial significance is turned upon itself in each
of its modal differences : i. e. the i infinite intelligence '
is drawn into itself in each of its i parts '. Every
thought of God, within the coherent context which it
contributes to constitute, is thus 'for itself, a self-
contained individual mind.

So far we might be content to accept the substance
of Spinoza's doctrine, whilst modifying the letter of
some of his statements. For if the modes of natura
naturata are thus 'for themselves' in their absolute

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND EEEOR 161

dependence on God, God's being is no longer ' purely
affirmative ', unless the ' purely affirmative ' essentially
includes articulate diversity. And if the one signifi
cance, in affirming itself in all its different ' emphases ',
affirms itself uniquely in each of them, so that each
draws for itself a distinctive individuality in the
affirmation which unites it with all the others,
1 negativity' is essential to the conception of God.
The differences within the articulated unity are not
indeed ' independent entities ' absolutely severed from
one another, or tacked together by i external relations'.
But they are genuinely distinct emphases of the one ;
and in their distinctions, in which they are 'for
themselves', they exclude and negate each other.
The exclusion and negation, since each mode is
completely itself only in its coherence with all, are
relative ; but they are not illusory, nor do they vanish
in the * affirmative ' being of God.

But Spinoza's theory seems to break down when
we consider error, i. e. the fragmentary thinking which,
claiming to be complete, is false. For error, as he
conceives it, involves that an undifferentiated portion
of a 'thought' of God — a fragment, which is not in
any way marked off within the single ' thought ', and
is thus not one, not self-contained, not 'a' fragment
at all — yet is ' for itself ', and affirms itself as self-
contained and individual. He speaks as if ' a single
thought' of God, which is distributed over many
different ' minds ', appears mutilated within one of
these ' minds '. And this mind hedges in the mutilated
fragment with the barriers of its own illusory indi
viduality, and with an illusory self-assurance confuses
it with the whole thought, and thus is in error.

But 'a mind', according to his theory, is nothing
but a thought of God reflected on itself; and if the
thought is undivided and one and without inner

162 THE NATURE OF TRUTH

plurality, its self-reflection is one mind, and not a
plurality of minds. Thus the many different minds,
constituted by a single thought of God, have no
distinctive being at all. Their plurality and the
self-assurance of each or of any of them, are sheer
inexplicable illusions, for which Spinoza's theory can
assign no real basis. Or if their plurality is real, the
thought distributed over them is itself many, and not
one. And on either alternative the supposed explana
tion of error vanishes.

Error, no doubt, is an illusory appearance of know
ledge, and involves in the end an illusory assumption
of self-containedness and individuality. But where,
within Spinoza's conception of God, is the ground
of the illusion ? Partial negation and severance
constitute the finiteness of the modes, and the
self-affirmation of the modes in this mutilation is
the basis of error. But a negation which severs the
modes from their coherence, and a self-assertion of
that which has no distinct being, are inconceivable
within Spinoza's metaphysical system.

We have thus confirmed the stress which we laid
upon this self-assertive feature in error. The erring
subject's confident belief in the truth of his knowledge
distinctively characterizes error, and converts a partial
apprehension of the truth into falsity. It is this
feature which refuses to be absorbed in fuller know
ledge, and which makes the fact of error a problem
for Metaphysics. And we have traced this discordance
in error to its principle as the claim of the finite to
self-dependence : a claim which monism, at least in
the form given to it by Spinoza, cannot render intelligible.
It is possible to insist upon the self-affirmation of the
modes in their dependence, and to attribute to them
a self-contained individuality in so far as the one Sub
stance is expressed differently, uniquely emphasized,

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND EEROE 163

in each of them. But error involves that the modes
contrive somehow to * be ' apart from their coherence, and
to set themselves up in isolation from one another and
against their substantial unity. And this declaration
of independence, where that which declares is nothing
real and nothing real is declared, is unthinkable.

§ 58. Long ago — almost at the outset of our inquiry
— we drew attention to what we called 'the dual
nature of human experience'. We distinguished a
certain timeless independence and universality, and
on the other hand a manifestation in and for finite
individuals, through temporal processes and under
temporal conditions. We spoke of this distinction as
familiar, and we treated the indissoluble union of
these contrasting aspects as the fundamental character
of our experience : i. e. we took it rather as the ground
for explaining other things than as something itself
requiring, or admitting of, explanation. Truth, beauty,
goodness, are timeless, universal, independent struc
tures ; and yet also it is essential to them to be
manifested in the thinking of finite subjects, in the
actions and volitions of perishing agents, in and
through the emotions and the creative activities of
individual artists and lovers of art.1 The composer
e. g. i discovers ' or ' makes ' a melody ; ' calls into
being ' or ' finds ' — the two sets of terms together-
express the fact — a living organized structure of
harmony or beautiful sound. And the work of art
which he has brought to birth, while it lives in
being played and heard, and is actual in the emotions
of finite subjects, is yet a thing of transcendent value,
independent, universal, and timeless in its beauty.
Composer, players, and audience are mere instruments
for the manifestation of its being, and 'it' controls
their service and compels their worship. Thus lovers

1 Cf. above, § 7.
L 2

164 THE NATURE OF TRUTH

i create ' and also ' discover ' a living structure of love,
which controls their lives and uses them as the
instruments of its being. They can neither annihilate
it at will, nor compel it to be. Yet it has come to
birth in them, it draws the breath of its life in their
feelings, volitions, and actions, and with the changes
of their finite individualities it may vanish in estrange
ment or enmity. So the man of science, or the
philosopher, labours to discover the truth ; i. e. to
find articulated before him an organized structure of
knowledge. And when he i makes the discovery ' (the
very phrase is suggestive), he finds something timeless
and unalterable, which is independent of himself and
all individual inquirers, and controls for ever all finite
thinking. Yet its being is essentially ' in ' and ' for '
and ' as ' the temporal and finite thinking of the in
dividual minds. It is universal ; but its universality is
stamped with the unique differences of the many minds,
in whose thinking it is manifest. It is independent
and dominates our thought ; but it is in and as our
thinking that its controlling independence is exercised.

You will say, perhaps, that all this is a needless
confusion, which may be avoided by a very simple
distinction. The artist and the man of science make
beautiful things and true theories; but beauty and
truth themselves are, and in no sense are made. The
aspect of independence, universality, and timelessness
falls on one side as the character of certain contents,
certain entities, which ' are ', but do not ' exist '. And
the aspect of finite, temporal, and contingent mani
festation falls on the other side, and in no sense enters
into the ' being ' of goodness, beauty, or truth.

Undoubtedly, a theory of knowledge, conduct, or
art, must rule out as irrelevant some of these temporal
and finite conditions ; and I shall return to this point
immediately. But if you mean precisely what you

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND ERROR 165

say — and otherwise your simple distinction will not
have cleared away the supposed ' confusion ' — you are
demanding a severance which will not stand a
moment's reflection. The works of Beethoven, e.g.,
or of Shelley, were l beautiful' before the public
admired them, and will remain ' beautiful' even
though its taste degenerates. Were they beautiful—
were they or their beauty at all — before Beethoven
or Shelley composed them? and will they or their
beauty be, if (or when) European music is as dead
as the music of the ancient Greeks, and English has
become a forgotten language? The beauty which is,
but in no sense exists or is manifest, is a very empty
abstraction. It is the beauty of a piece of music
which is not composed, or heard, or read ; of a picture
which is not conceived, or seen, or remembered ; of
a poem neither written, nor thought, nor appreciated.
Beauty of this kind is all one, and all (if you like)
' eternal ' ; and what it is, and what its ' being' is, is not
hard to say. It is a sheer abstraction, without enough
content to distinguish it from nothing ; and its ' being '
is to be the empty object of an empty thought.

And if you insist that at least it is otherwise with truth,
and that e. g. the internal angles of a triangle were
together equal to two right angles in the days of Adam,
or even before, and will remain so when the whole race
of man has perished ; I am ready in a sense to accept
what you say, but I should make a suggestion as to its
interpretation. What we now recognize as true, is in
vested in our present recognition with a timeless applica
tion. We cannot think of a triangle, or indeed of the
extended world, without inevitably recognizing this as
a feature in its character, which is independent of our
choice and timelessly (i.e. indifferently through all
times) the same. And this ' eternity ', which charac
terizes truth, is manifest in and through and as our

166 THE NATUKE OF TRUTH

present grasp of the nature of things ; and is thus a
convincing instance of that ' indissoluble union of con
trasting aspects ' which I am trying to enforce.1

§ 59. A theory of knowledge must rule out as irrele-

1 To say that beauty, truth, and goodness ' are ', and that their
' being ' has nothing to do with * existence ' ; that they are ' real ',
whether or not they appear in finite experience and under tem
poral conditions: this, I am maintaining, is to make a barren
distinction and to play idly with words. And we can see that
this is so, if we will but ask ourselves what beauty, what truth,
and what goodness 'are' in absolute severance from the existent,
and what kind of ' being ' they thus enjoy. But on the other
hand, it is fatal to over-emphasize the aspect of ' existence ', and
there is grave danger of misinterpretation. For are we to say
that these structures ' are ' not at all, when not yet (or no longer)
actual in and as the thoughts, volitions, and emotions of finite
subjects? If so, what becomes of their universal, timeless, and
independent character ? We are disquieted with the thought that,
in being discovered, they are ' called into life'; and that, when
their finite vehicles vanish, they too sink back into the void
within which they were * found ' or ' made '. And unable to
acquiesce in this conclusion, we may be tempted to substantiate
the finite subjects, and to postulate their everlasting persistence :
a ' personal immortality ', where our conception of the ' persons '
and of their 'survival' is equally confused. Or we may clothe
our ignorance in the garb of religion, and postulate a God who
sustains in heaven the structures which have fled from earth.

Certainly our experience is full of perplexities, which it is not
easy — perhaps not possible — to interpret in terms of a rational
theory. We shrink from the charge of scepticism, and are too
often afraid to confess the limits of our knowledge. Have we
ever convinced ourselves that the death of a friend in no way
injures the reality of those eternal structures, in the sustaining of
which he lived and worked and made 'himself? And should we
be right, if we were convinced ? Or who has not felt a jarring
sense of loss — a suspicion that something of transcendent value is
over and done with — at the conclusion of a noble rendering of
a drama or a piece of music? And when one reflects on the
nations which have vanished across the stage of history, to all
appearance carrying with them structures of transcendent value —
the truth, goodness, and beauty, which lived in them, and in
which they lived— it seems but cold comfort to be told that
fragments of these structures survive in the present ; or that e. g.
the spirit of Athenian sculpture, poetry, and philosophy, still
breathes its influence in modern civilization, and inspires our art
and science. At the best, we feel, something of transcendent value
is lost ; or, if sustained somehow in the timeless actuality of ' ideal
experience ', the how eludes the grasp of our rational thinking.

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND EEEOR 167

vant some — perhaps most, but certainly not all — of the
temporal and finite conditions under which the truth
is known. The known truth, as the subject of study
in a theory of knowledge, is a concrete universal
content, a single meaning differentiated into many
constituent meanings, and emerging in and for many
different minds. But the constituent meanings are
themselves universal. They are determinate ' judge
ments of science ', or systems of such judgements,
not this or that opinion. And the 'many different
minds ' are different types of i appercipient character ',
different stages and levels of i the scientific mind ' ;
not the uniquely individual differences of appercipient
character, which distinguish my mind from yours, nor
the different stages in the temporal growth of the
individual thinker's apprehension. The development
of knowledge from this point of view is not a temporal,
but a logical process : and error finds its place there as
a partial phase or ' moment ' in the timeless dialectic,
which is the articulation of the truth.

The differences of this and that knowing mind — a
fortiori, the confused mass of idiosyncrasies which
together distinguish this i person ' or i self ' from that—
are recognized only to be set aside and, if necessary,
discounted. They are accidental imperfections, super
ficial irregularities, in the medium through which
truth is reflected ; limitations in the vessels through
which knowledge is poured. And the temporal pro
cesses of our knowing are mere incidents in the mani
festation of truth. They are, so to say, bubbles on
the stream of knowledge ; and the passing show of
arbitrary variation, which they create on the surface,
leaves the depths untroubled — a current uniform and
timeless. My and your thinking, my and your ' self,
the particular temporal processes, and the extreme
self-substantiation of the finite ' modes ' which is error

168 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

in its full discordance : these are incidents somehow
connected with the known truth, but they themselves,
and the manner of their connexion, are excluded from
the theory of knowledge. They are problems to be
discussed, if anywhere, in Metaphysics. There indeed
they force themselves upon us with relentless impor
tunity. For, to all appearance, the truth ' is ' only as
coming to be in and through temporal processes, and
as reflected through the innumerable variations of the
finite minds. The stream of knowledge, it would
seem, must be poured through these imperfect vessels,
and cannot flow without breaking into these bubbles.
The finite mind, in its knowing activities, is nothing
but this emphasis, this imperfect expression of the
universal content ; but this emphasis is different from
the others, and in its difference and uniqueness essen
tial to the complete expression of the one signifi
cance. The temporal process is nothing but a limited
and arrested portion of the timeless actuality ; yet the
latter essentially maintains itself through all and every
determinate portion of time. And if all this is mere
appearance, an illusory seeming, Metaphysics must
show the ground of the illusion in the reality which
is distorted in the appearance.

' But surely/ it will be said, i all this is beside the
point. The problems connected with the dual character
of knowledge exist only for Metaphysics, and Meta
physics may be trusted to deal with them. A theory
of knowledge, as you yourself have admitted, studies
the known truth qua timeless and universal ; and the
temporal and individual aspect of knowledge, if not
entirely eliminated, fades into the background.'

Now I will not pause to contest this objection. I
have admitted that a theory of knowledge is bound to
restrict the area of its inquiry, by abstracting from
' some, or perhaps most, of the temporal and finite

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND EKKOB 169

conditions under which the truth is known.' And I
will not here question the objector's interpretation of
that admission, nor press him to explain more definitely
how, on his view, a theory of knowledge is related to
Metaphysics. I will assume that a theory of knowledge
is a partial science, with a province thus limited and
thus severed from Metaphysics ; and that it is entitled to
appeal to Metaphysics for the solution of any problems
connected with that side of knowledge, which its
abstracting hypothesis has discarded. And all I will
say is this : no theory of truth formulated under the
coherence-notion is a ' theory of knoivledge ' in that sense.
For truth, as conceived under the coherence-notion, is
the character of the one significant whole ; and a
theory of truth thus conceived is of necessity a meta
physical theory. Hence, if the coherence-notion is to
be maintained, we cannot exclude these problems, and
we cannot shift the burden by an appeal to an
extraneous Metaphysics. We must be able to conceive
the one significant whole, whose coherence is perfect
truth, as a self-fulfilment, in which the finite, temporal,
and contingent aspect receives its full recognition and
its full solution as the manifestation of the timeless
and complete ; and we must be able to show both the
extreme opposition (which constitutes the discordance
of error), and the overcoming of it, as essential
moments in that self-fulfilment. The absolute indi
viduality of God (to borrow Spinoza's terminology)
demands for its self-fulfilment that its modes should
be or become ' independent ' in a sense which, at least
for themselves and for any experience short of God's abso
lute experience, sets them in opposition, hostility, and dis
cord to one another and to their own substantial being.
And it demands also that this opposition — or, if it be
illusory, the real ground of it — should be an essential
Contributory moment in the complete self-fulfilment.

170 THE NATUKE OF TKUTH

§60. Let me recapitulate the considerations which
have led us to our present position. ' Coherence ' is not
to be interpreted as l formal consistency '. Coherence
of form, irrespective of the matter cohering, is mere
i validity ' : at most a negative condition (or sine qua
nori) of the complete truth, which the coherence-notion
professes to grasp. The ' coherence ', which is truth,
is the concrete character of a significant whole, in
which form and matter cannot be severed from one
another, nor intelligibly considered apart.1 And
nothing short of the one all-inclusive significant whole
— ideal or absolute experience — can be completely
1 coherent' in this sense of the term.2 Hence truth
for the coherence-notion is the character of ideal or
absolute experience ; and any partial experience (e. g.
human knowledge) is i true ' more or less, according
as it exhibits a character more or less approximating
to the complete coherence, or according as ideal ex
perience reveals itself more or less perfectly in it, as
the substance of which it is a modal expression.

A theory of truth as coherence, if it is to be
adequate, must be an intelligible account of the
ultimate coherence in which the one significant whole
is self-revealed ; and it must show the lesser forms of
experience, with their less complete types of coherence,
as essential constitutive i moments ' in this self-revela
tion. Thus, it must render intelligible the ' dual nature
of human experience ', which a mere ' theory of know
ledge', and a theory of art or conduct, assume as the
fundamental character of the subject-matters which
they have respectively to study. It must show e. g.
how the complete coherence, which is perfect truth,
involves as a necessary i moment ' in its self-mainten
ance the self-assertion of the finite modal minds : a
self-assertion, which in its extreme form is Error. It
1 Above, §§ 25, 26. 2 Above, § 27.

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND ERKOK 171

must reconcile this self-assertive independence with
the modal dependence of the self-asserting minds ; and
the reconciliation must be clearly manifest as an
essential moment in the coherence, which is the life
of the one significant whole.

Now it is obvious that the demands thus made
cannot be completely satisfied by any metaphysical
theory. For the complete satisfaction of these demands
would be complete truth manifest to itself. And
every metaphysical theory, as the outcome of ex
perience which is partial and so far finite, is at best
a partial manifestation of the truth, and not the
whole truth wholly self-revealed.

The coherence-notion of truth may thus be said
to suffer shipwreck at the very entrance of the
harbour. It has carried us safely over the dangers
and difficulties to which the other two notions
succumbed ; but the voyage ends in disaster, and
a disaster which is inevitable. For, unless our whole
discussion is fundamentally mistaken, the coherence-
notion of necessity involves the recognition that
certain demands both must be and cannot be completely
satisfied.

And the tale of our disaster is not yet finished.
For there remains a problem, on which I have more
than once touched, but which during this chapter
has slipt into the background. Yet the difficulties
which it presents to the coherence-notion are no less
formidable than those we have just considered, and
are of themselves sufficient to ensure our discomfiture.
For truth, as it appears in human knowledge, is
distributed over two opposed factors. Our knowledge
is thought ' about ' an Other ; and the opposition of
the thought and its Other is apparently vital. Truth—
i. e. such truth as we attain in judgement and inference
—dwells neither in the thought nor in the thought's

172 THE NATURE OF TRUTH

Other, but in some sense in the union of the two.
And the union, to which we give the name of ' corre
spondence ', demands the independence and opposition
of the factors which it unites.1

Now we saw long ago that, if the coherence-notion
is to approve itself, ' a continuous passage must be
shown from that conception of things, which renders
the coherence-notion possible, to the dualistic con
ception which is involved in correspondence.'2 Other
wise human knowledge remains, for all we can tell,
unrelated to ideal experience ; and though we may
describe the truth of correspondence as a ' symptom ' 3
of perfect truth, the description is a mere matter of
faith, which we cannot expect our critics to accept.
And again we decided long ago that ideal experience
must include within itself a negative element ; that
there must be in the very heart of truth some form of
Otherness, which will justify the relative independence
of subject and object within human knowledge.4 But
if we have thus expressed the most admirable inten
tions, we have hitherto taken not a single step towards
their fulfilment. For we have not shown how this
self-diremption of the one significant whole is to be
conceived. We have not shown how the self-fulfil
ment, which is the coherence of the One, necessarily
and intelligibly involves the emergence and the over
coming of this inner Otherness.

We might indeed attempt to reduce this fresh
difficulty to a variety of the first. For we might urge
that the opposition of thought and its Other, which
fundamentally characterizes human knowledge, is in the
end a form in which the self-assertion of the finite and
the partialness and inadequacy of finite thought appear.
We might appeal once more to the theory of Spinoza.

1 Above, §§ 42-4. 2 Above, p. 120. 3 Above, p. 17.

4 Above, pp. 115 if., 123.

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND ERROR 173

God's complete Thought is fundamentally ' other ' than
his Extension and the other Attributes ; and yet, as
God's Thought, it is indissolubly one with them all.
In the ideal experience there is the opposition, but
the opposition is overcome. So (we might perhaps
suggest) our knowledge — which is God thinking in and
as us — exhibits the same identity of utterly opposed
factors, the same return from self-estrangement. But in
so far as we are not fully conscious of our oneness with
God — in so far as ' for ourselves ' we are not modes of
Substance, but self-assertive individual minds — we ex
perience the i otherness ' of thought's object, and not
the overcoming of the * otherness ' which is in and for
God. And we might add that where we attain to the
full consciousness of our modal dependence on God —
where we are i for ourselves ' what we are ' for God ' —
this alienation is overcome for our consciousness. For
in cognitio intuitiva we know, and, in knowing, are what
we know. And in this consummation of knowledge,
mediation has not been eliminated, but has attained to
the explicit completeness of the union which it involves,
and has thereby solidified and rendered concrete the
content of the t intuition '. Discursive thinking ' about '
an Other has passed into its own fulfilment as the
transparent immediacy of intuition in which truth,
absolute and complete, is self-revealed.1

But here too, as in the treatment of error, Spinoza's
theory is fatally defective. The substantial identity of
Thought and the other Attributes is stated dogmati
cally, but not in any sense made intelligible. The
God of Spinoza is one, and the unity is a simultaneity
of contrasted Attributes.2 The one Substance does
not fulfil its being through a self-diremption and a
return upon self-identity by the negation of this
negative. And though the conception of the one

1 Cf. above, p. 58. » Cf. e.g. Spinoza, Ethics, i. 10, S.

174 THE NATUEE OF TEUTH

significant whole, as manifesting and sustaining its
unity through an inner process, is suggested by Spinoza's
insistence that God's ' essence ' is ' power ', there is no
attempt to work out the conception. The otherness
of God's Attributes and their identity are postulated.
God is a Substance 'consisting of an infinite diver
sity of Attributes. God is the union of contrasts ; i. e.
the receptacle in which they are statically combined,
not the life which fulfils itself in the making and over
coming of oppositions.1

Thus, even if we succeeded in reducing the problem
of the dualism involved in human knowledge to a form
of the first problem, we should still be confronted by
an unsolved difficulty. For we should be no nearer to
an intelligible conception of this self-diremption of the
ideal experience, and the continuous return from this
1 Otherness ' which is to constitute its concrete unity.
And since all human discursive knowledge remains
thought 'about' an Other2, any and every theory of
the nature of truth must itself be ' about ' truth as its

1 In Spinoza's God the negative element is not overcome, but
simply is not. I may here call attention to a minor difficulty in
his theory. God's Thought is the awareness of itself, as well as
of the other attributes. In this reflection upon itself, an idea is
an idea ideae, a mode of thought with itself for its object. Here
then — in self-consciousness — thought and its object are absolutely
one. But the unity is an abstract identity, and not the over
coming of its Other by thought's return upon itself. For whereas,
in the thought which reflects a mode of extension, the same mode
of Substance maintains its identity in spite of the Otherness of
its two expressions ; in the thought which reflects itself, the
reflecting and reflected thoughts are the same mode of Substance
expressed under the same Attribute (cf. Ethics, ii. 21, S.).

* I do not wish to sever mediate and immediate thinking ; and
I am not saying that discursive or mediate thinking is in no sense
also intuitive or immediate. But in judgement and inference the
primary emphasis is on the mediate and discursive side. Know
ledge, so far as that is judgement and inference, is primarily and
explicitly thinking * about ' an Other. And even though discur
sive thought may find its concentrated fulfilment in immediate or
intuitive knowledge, its character of ' Aboutness ' is not thereby
eliminated, nor the * Otherness ' of its object destroyed.

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND ERROR 175

Other; i.e. the coherence-notion of truth on its own
admission can never rise above the level of knowledge
which at the best attains to the l truth ' of corre
spondence. Assuming that the coherence-notion of
truth is sound, no theory of truth as coherence can
itself be completely true, but is at most possessed of
a ' truth ' which we may believe, but have not proved,
to be i symptomatic ' of perfect truth.

§61. We may claim at the end of our discussion
to have brought the main difficulties, which confront
the coherence-notion qf truth, into a clear and definite
form. We pointed out at the end of Chapter III, that
if an adequate theory of truth is to be formulated,
the modal nature of the finite subject of knowledge
must be more frankly recognized and maintained ;
and that the negative element in ideal experience
must be shown as the basis and the justification of the
opposition of subject and object in human knowledge.1
We have now seen that the difficulties in the way of
a coherence-theory lie (1) in the reconciliation of the
modal nature of the finite subjects with their self-
assertive independence ; and (2) in the recognition of
the individuality of the significant whole as a life
timelessly self-fulfilled through an opposition which it
creates and, in creating, overcomes. A theory of truth
as coherence, we may say, must enable us to conceive
the one significant whole so as to satisfy certain
requirements. We must so conceive it that it is a
timeless actuality, maintaining and fulfilling itself
through the setting up within itself of modes, which
yet are independent ; arid by creating an inner Other
ness or duality, which yet is continuously subdued to
unity. It must be an essential l moment ' in the
Absolute Life that it should invest its modes with
self-dependence, and create within itself an opposition
1 Above, p. 121.

176 THE NATURE OF TRUTH

between two factors ; and it must be a no less es
sential l moment' that it should timelessly take back
into its unity the differences thus created, and ' take
them back' without destroying them. And further,
we must be able to conceive human discursive think
ing, with its persistent opposition between subject
and object, with its finite and temporal processes and
its unresolved discords, as the arrest of this timeless
and complete actuality : an arrest, moreover, which is
itself an essential ' moment ' in the life which is ideal
experience.1

' Yes,' it will be said, ' a theory of truth as coher
ence must satisfy these requirements ; and it must
satisfy them as an intelligible theory, i.e. as a theory
itself true qua coherent. But this, as you have just
shown, is not only de facto unaccomplished, but is im
possible by the very nature of the case. A theory of
truth, based on the coherence-notion, is not itself true
qua coherent ; or if true, its truth is a fatal exception
which destroys its own basis. No judgement, or
system of judgements, can be completely true, if truth

1 Perhaps I ought to explain that in describing ideal experience,
here and elsewhere (e. g. §§ 26, 42, 45), as * dynamic ', as a
' process', 'movement', or 'life', I do not mean to suggest that
it is not yet complete, but is coming to be complete in time. In
comparing it to a living thing, the point of the comparison lies
in the balance of movements, processes, or functions, which is at
any moment what we call the ' life ' of the living thing ; not in
the gradual development of the living thing from one moment to
another. I am well aware of the difficulties in this conception,
and of the inadequacy of these categories (cf. above, §§ 27 and 28),
I may add, that to view the Universe as a whole as progressing or
coming-to-be in time, is to my mind a contradiction in terms. I can
attribute no intelligible meaning to an absolute truth, which is
not timelessly and eternally now, but which is to be at some future
time ; nor to an 'ideal experience', which is to emerge into actuality at
a determinate (though perhaps distant) date. The * Day of Judge
ment ' and ' the future life ' are images, which have their value
in certain regions of experience ; but I have never been able to
see that they or their analogues throw any light on the problems
of philosophy.

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND EBROR 177

is " coherence"; and therefore the system of judgements
(the theory), in which the coherence-notion is most
adequately formulated, must still of necessity fail of
complete truth. Thus the end of your discussion is
not only failure, but your own admission that failure
is inevitable. You emerge from your shipwreck in
utter destitution, a sceptic naked and unashamed.
And do not imagine that you can cover your shame by
an appeal to immediate faith, or to the intuition that
somehow the nature of things does involve these funda
mental oppositions, and does subdue them to its unity
without destroying them. For you yourself have in
sisted that immediate intuitive faith of this kind is
neither " true " nor " false ", except in so far as it
stands, or fails to stand, the test of mediation.' l

And from another quarter our disaster will be used
to point a moral against us. -'See what comes,' we
shall perhaps hear, ' of setting aside the traditional
divisions and the accepted maps. If you had held fast
to the distinction between the provinces of Logic and
Psychology, and if you had kept Metaphysics safe in
the region of eternal and unalterable Eeality, all this
confusion would have been avoided. Truth and falsity,
as predicates of the content of thought, would have
been disentangled from the psychical machinery and
the temporal processes of cognition. Error, as the
condition of the erring subject, would have been an
interesting study for Psychology, and possibly also for
Moral Philosophy. But you, as a Logician, would
have been concerned only with the content of the
erring subject's thought ; and error, thus considered,
is but partial knowledge capable of absorption in the
fuller truth. And, in your Metaphysical speculations,
you would have moved in a region above the finite
with its illusions and problems of self-assertion.'
1 Of. above, pp. 55-8.

178 THE NATUEE OF TKUTH

§62. Let us consider how we emerge from the
wreck, and where we stand. We have acknowledged
that no theory of truth as coherence can be completely
true ; for as a system of judgements, as a piece of
discursive knowledge, it must be ' other ' than the
truth ' about ' which it is, and thus it must fail of that
concrete coherence which is complete truth. And
again, as the knowledge of mind at a determinate
level of appercipient character, it must fall short of
the complete self-revelation which is absolute truth
manifest to itself. But the former imperfection it
shares with all possible theories of truth or of anything
else ; and the latter imperfection need not prevent
its being as true as a theory can be, and more true (more
near to complete coherence) than e.g. theories of truth
as correspondence or as a quality of independent
entities. For these theories also fall short of absolute
truth manifest to itself. They too are the knowledge
(the discursive thinking) of mind at a determinate
level of appercipient character. And we have not
retracted the conclusion which we reached as a result
of our criticism of them, viz. that they embody a
level of appercipient character lower than the level
embodied in the coherence-notion. The coherence-
notion fails of complete success ; but it has carried us
further into the heart of the problem than either of
the other two notions, and it has maintained itself
against difficulties to which they succumbed.1

That the truth itself is one, and whole, and complete,
and that all thinking and all experience moves within
its recognition and subject to its manifest authority ;
this I have never doubted. My criticism does not
touch the immediate recognition of the one truth, nor
the immediate recognition of the various judgements
and systems of judgement as more or less true,
1 Above, pp. 64, 65.

THE NEGATIVE ELEMENT AND ERROR 179

i. e. as approximating more or less closely to the one
standard. But this immediate experience of the truth
remains for me what it was at the outset — a problem.
I have examined certain attempts to mediate it, i.e.
to raise this immediate certainty to the level of re
flective knowledge. And though I have endeavoured
to rank them according to their degrees of comparative
success, I have been compelled to confess that none
of them can be maintained as in the end and in all
respects successful. And if I am told that I ought
not to have looked for complete and final triumph, but
should have acquiesced in partial success, I should re
ply that this maxim of procedure can have no rational
basis, except for the man who has attempted to formulate
a complete theory and, in failing, has recognized that
and why such failure is inevitable. I cannot persuade
myself that the sharp division between the provinces
of Logic and Psychology is justifiable ; nor that the
difficulties, which have perplexed me, are irrelevant.
Nor do I believe that a sane Metaphysics can leave
Logic and Psychology thus delimited and thus severed ;
or that the Metaphysician is entitled to acquiesce in
logical theories, when their success demands that he
should accept within the sphere of Logic assumptions
which his own metaphysical theory condemns. And
if I am wrong, I may at least have done some service,
inasmuch as the failure of my present attempt may be
used to warn those who, like myself, are tempted to
distrust the accepted maps.

To call a man 'a sceptic ' is a recognized mode of
abuse ; but not every failure to attain a positive result
deserves to be thus condemned. A positive result
may be bought .at too great a cost ; for it may be due
to an abstraction which neglects the ' sting' of the
problems. And I do not think that, in closing this
Essay with a negative result (for in the main I presume

180 THE NATURE OF TRUTH

that the result is negative), I am guilty of a t scepticism '
of which I have any cause to be ashamed. I am
ending with a confession of ignorance ; but at least
I have cleared my mind of much sham knowledge.
And I am old-fashioned enough to believe that this
achievement is the first requisite for any one who
hopes to learn.

INDEX

'Absolute ', the, 84 n.

Absolute moments and points,
45-7.

Adamson, E., 69 n., 71 n. 1.

Agathon (quoted), 105 n.

Antipodes, ' conceivable ', 66-7.

Antisthenes, 48.

'Appercipient character ', 92-9,
143.

Aristotle, his theory of Error,
124-9, 134 n. 2; of 'nega
tive realities', 134-8; of the
truth of judgement and in
ference, 7, 124-9, 134 n. 2 • of
Substance, 126 n. : de Anima,
124 n. 2, 134 n. 1, n. 2 ; de In-
teipr., 134 n. 1 ; Metaphysics,
124 n. 2, n. 3, 126 n., 134 n. 1,
n. 2 ; Pos£. Anal, 86 w., 126 w. ,
128 n. 1.

Art, beauty of a work of, 21 n.,
100, 145-7, 165, 166 n.

Beauty, dual aspect of, 20-2,
163-6.

Bosanquet, Prof. B., 4, 75 «.,
86 w., 96 ft. 1.

Bradley, F. H., 4, 20 n. 1, 85 n.,
118 w.

Carroll, Lewis (quoted), 127w.2.

Categories, degrees of adequacy
in, 79-82.

Centaur, 'inconceivable', 66-7.

Christiansen, Broder,69w., 71 n. 1.

Coherence, the notion of, stated,
66-8, 76-7: x formal con-
sistency, 73-6.

Conceivability, 66-8.

Correspondence = being related
by a one-one relation, 9: in
volves two factors, 12-24 :
a ' symptom ' of truth, 17, 28 :
applied to problem of Error,
124-33.

Descartes, his theory of know
ledge, 69-73 : intuitus, deductio,
inductio, cmimcratio, 71 n. 1, n. 2.

Dynamic x static conception of
ideal experience, 76-82, 114,
122, 173-4, 176 n.

'Emphasis', 103-4, 137-8,
160-1, 168.

Epistemology, 37, 54, 166-9.

Error, the 'sting' of, 130-2, 140-
5 : = ' discord resolved in har
mony of knowledge '(?), 145-7.

Experience, 'ideal', 78-84 (cf.
also ' Dynamic '): timelessness
and independence x temporal
conditions of its manifestation
and finite ness of its ' vehicles ',
166 n. : dual nature of human
experience, 20-5, 163-8 : use
of term, 83 n.

Fact, 'brute', 105-8: the judge
ment of, 104-13.

Finite subjects and processes
and 'ideal experience', 20-2,
82-4, 163-8, 166 n.

Form and Matter of thought,
73-7.

Formal consistency, formal
Logic, 73-6.

Galileo, 142.

Goodness, dual aspect of, 20-2,
163-6.

Hegel, 5, 84 n.

'Idea', the, 84 n. : cf. 15-7, 28.

Idea as psychical image or
symbol X logical content or
meaning, 19-20, 52-4, 118w.

Idealism, 'subjective', 54, 59-63.

Identity, concrete, 77, 95-6, cf.
174 w.l : 'logic of abstract iden
tity ', 48: numerical, 47-8: per
sonal, 46 n.

Immediate, difference, 55-6 : in
tuition, 5 1-8: x mediate think
ing, 55-8, 173, 174 n. 2, 178^9.

Inconceivability of opposite as
test of truth, 67 n.

Individual, 'psychological', 118 /?.

182

INDEX

Insight, 'philosophical', 42.
Intuitus, Descartes' theory of,
69-73.

Judgement, ' universal judge
ment of science ', 85 - 104 :
1 descriptive ' and ' classifica-
tory', 108-9: 'historical',
105-8: 'of fact', 104-13:
'of perception', 109-13: 're
ciprocal hypothetical ', 86-8,
95-9 : ' rudimentary disjunc
tive ', ' hypothetical,' ' infinite ',
135-7 : no single judgement
can be isolated, 92-9, 107-10,
113-4, 143.

Leibniz, 8, 9.

Logic, formal, 73-6 : and Meta
physics, 119-21, 139, 177-9 : and
Psychology, 118 n., 139, 179.

Maier, H., 134 n. 1.

Meaning, 'adjectival', 114-7.
(And see ' Significance ', ' Signi
ficant whole'.)

Metaphysics, and Logic, 119-21,
139, 177-9: and Psychology,
118 w., 139, 179: and Theory
of Knowledge, 166-9.

Mill, J. S., 67 n.

Moore, G. E., 32-3: his 'Refu-
tation of Idealism ', 61 n.

Negative Element (Negativity),

121, ch. 4 : involved in System,

122, 137-8.

' Negative Kealities ', 134-8.

Occasionalism, 44.

Opposition, between Subject
and Object, 115-21,123, 171-6:
' contrary ' and ' contradictory ',
123-4: 'ultimate', 121, 148.

Organism, category of, 79-82.

Plato, KepuUic, 124 n. 2 ; So-
phistes, 123 n. 1, 142 n. 1 ;
Theaetetus, 3, 123 n. 1, 127 n. 1,
132 n. 2.

Psychical fact x logical con
tent, 19-20, 52-4, 118w.

'Psychological individual ', 1 ISn.

Psychology, Epistemology, Logic
and Metaphysics, 37, 54, 118 n.,
139, 166-9, 179.

Ptolemaic astronomy, 94.

Relation, 'cognitive', 50 n. :
'external', 11, 12, 26, 43-50:
' numerically-identical ', 47-8:
' one-one ', 8, 9 n.

Russell, Bertrand, 5, 9 n. 1,
ch. 2 : his theory of ' personal
identity', 46 n.

Scepticism, 166 n., 177-80.

'Scientific Mind', the, 92-9,
115-7.

Significance, 15-7, 22, 28,
160-1: 'many-faceted', 103-4.

' Significant whole ', 66-7, 68 n.,
76-7, 83 w,, 113-6, 158, 160-1,
175-6: only one, 78-9.

' Simple Qualities ', 39-55.

Smith, Norman, 70 n. 2.

Spinoza, 61 w., 140 n., 148-63:
his theory of Error, 157-63 :
of substantial identity of the
Attributes, 173-4.

Stout, Prof. G. F., 85 w., 93 n.

Symbol, 'conventional' x 'na
tural', 118 n.

Truth, and 'recognition ', 12-22,
51-5,92-9,165-8: and 'signifi
cance', 15-7, 22, 103-4, 107-8:
degrees of, 85-1 14: 'individual'
and 'universal' aspects of, 20-4,
163-9.

' Universal judgements of
science', 85-104.

Whewell, 67 n.

Whole, different types of, 137-
8 : ' Experience - wholes ', 26 :
genuine whole = teleologically-
coherent individual, 10 n. , 133 :
'significant', 66-7, 68 w., 76-7,
83 w., 113-6, 158, 160-1, 175-6.

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